Unit - I

AD HOC NETWORKS

INTRODUCTION AND ROUTING PROTOCOLS

1. What is an ad hoc wireless network?

An Ad hoc network is a multi hop, infrastructure less network which has no fixed routers or
access points control the communication between the nodes and resources. Node itself act as a
router and host. It is used in battlefields and military applications.
2. Outline the challenging issues in ad hoc network maintenance.
The major issues that affect the design, deployment, and performance of an ad hoc wireless
system are as follows:
a. Medium Access Control (MAC)
b. Routing
c. Multicasting
d. Transport layer protocol
e. Quality of Service (QOS)
f. Self-organization
g. Security
h. Energy management
i. Addressing and service discovery
j. Scalability
k. Deployment considerations
3. List the characteristics of Adhoc network
The characteristics of MANETs are,
1. Dynamic topologies
2. Bandwidth-constrained and variable capacity links.
3. Energy-constrained operation.
4. Limited physical security.
5. Less memory, power and light weight features.
6. The access to channel by any node is not restricted.
7. Decentralized network control
4. List the advantages of Ad hoc network
Advantages of Ad Hoc Networks
 Ad-hoc networks can have more flexibility.
 It is better in mobility.
 It can be turn up and turn down in a very short time.
 More economical
 It considered as a robust network because of its non-hierarchical distributed control
and management mechanisms.
Disadvantages of Ad Hoc Networks
 Unpredictable Topology
 Limited Bandwidth
 Lose of data
 Interference
 Limited Security
 Energy Constraints

5. List the applications of Ad hoc / MANET

 The applications of MANET are,
1. Military applications
2. Emergency rescue
3. Crisis-management applications
4. Telemedicine
5. Tele-geo processing applications
6. Virtual navigation
7. Education via the internet
8. Wireless sensor network
6. Write the importance of a Gateway in a wireless network.
 Gateway nodes in the ad hoc wireless Internet are the entry points to the wired Internet.
 The major part of the service provisioning lies with the gateway nodes.
 Owned and operated by a service provider,
 Gateways perform the following tasks:
keeping track of the end users, bandwidth management, load balancing, traffic shaping,
packet filtering, bandwidth fairness, and address, service, and location discovery.
7. Major Issues in Designing Routing Protocols for Ad hoc Networks
1.Node mobility
2. Bandwidth constrained
3. Error-prone shared broadcast radio channel
4. Hidden and exposed terminal problems
5. Resource / energy constrained
6. Security
7. Highly dynamic topology
8. No infrastructure for centralized administration
9. Establishing end-to-end path.

8. What is the major requirements of a routing protocol in ad hoc wireless networks?

 Minimum route acquisition delay
 Quick route reconfiguration
 Loop-free routing
 Distributed routing approach
 Minimum control overhead
 Scalability
 Provisioning of QoS
 Support for time-sensitive traffic & Security and privacy
9. Generalize the concept of hidden terminal problem
 Hidden terminals are nodes that are hidden (or not reachable) from the sender of a data
transmission session, but are reachable to the receiver of the session
 Collision of packets at a receiving node due to the simultaneous transmission of those
nodes
 Results - Inefficient bandwidth utilization, reduce throughput.
 10. Categorize the routing protocols of ad hoc wireless networks.
Ad hoc routing protocols can be broadly classified into three categories :
Proactive or table driven routing protocols
Reactive or on-demand routing protocols
Hybrid routing protocols.

11. Generalized the concept of exposed terminal

The nodes that are in the transmission range of the sender of an on-going session, are
prevented from making a transmission. The exposed nodes should be allowed to transmit in
a controlled fashion without causing collision to the on-going data transfer. Exposed terminal
problem causes delay in packet transmission

12. Differentiate between proactive and reactive routing protocols.

Proactive Reactive
Nodes continuously evaluate and update routes Nodes evaluate and update routes only when they
are needed
Periodic route-update packets Route update when necessary
Route from each node to every other node in the Routes from Source to Destination only
network
Routes are ready to use instantaneously Routes constructed when needed, higher
connection setup delay
Large routing tables Small or No routing tables
Large amount of Overhead Minimum overhead
13. What do you mean by proactive routing protocols / table driven routing protocol?
Proactive routing protocols are also called as table-driven routing protocols in which each node
maintains a routing table. Routing table contains up-to-date routing information of the entire
network.
14. Mention the significance of power aware routing in ad hoc wireless networks.
 Minimizes the energy consumption while routing the traffic,
 Minimizing the total power consumption of all the nodes in the network,
 Minimizing the overhead etc
 Maximizing the lifetime of the network
15. Write the classification of routing protocols based on the routing information update
mechanism.
Ad hoc wireless network routing protocols can be classified into 3 major categories based on
the routing information update mechanism. They are:
Proactive or table-driven routing protocols
 Every node maintains the network topology information in the form of routing tables by
periodically exchanging routing information.
 Routing information is generally flooded in the whole network.
 Whenever a node requires a path to a destination, it runs an appropriate path- finding
algorithm on the topology information it maintains.
Reactive or on-demand routing protocols

 Do not maintain the network topology information.

 Obtain the necessary path when it is required, by using a connection establishment
process.
Hybrid routing protocols

 Combine the best features of the above two categories.

 Nodes within a certain distance from the node concerned, or within a particular
geographical region, are said to be within the routing zone of the given node.
 For routing within this zone, a table-driven approach is used.
 For nodes that are located beyond this zone, an on-demand approach is used.

16. List the advantages and disadvantages of proactive routing protocols.

Advantage
Minimum time is required to find out a route for data transmission.
Disadvantages
Due to the frequent change of network topology, the exchange of up-to-date
information has to be done periodically.
Network overload is high.
Bandwidth consumption is high in large networks.
 This type of protocol is not suited for large networks.
17. What is routing table ?
It contains the shortest distance and the up-to-date information of all destinations. In order to
determine the shortest path, each node maintains the ID of destination node, next hop,
distance (cost) and predecessor node.
18. How to update the routing table in table driven routing protocol.
The routing table updates are of two types: incremental updates and full dumps

Full dump
o A node sends the whole routing table to the neighbors and thereby increases
network overhead
o A full dump is done either when the local topology changes significantly or when
an incremental update requires more than a single NDPU.
Incremental update
o In incremental update method, only the recent updated entries are sent
o An incremental update requires a single network data packet unit (NDPU)
o These are used when a node does not observe significant changes in the local
topology
o The incremental update method is more suitable when the network is large and stable
so that heavy traffic can be avoided
19. Write the difference between cellular and mobile ad hoc network

Cellular network Ad Hoc network

Network routing Centralized, all the traffic Distributed, No centralized system such as
goes through the base station Base station needed
Fixed infrastructure Not fixed infrastructure
Circuit Switching Packet Switching
Single hop wireless links Multi hop wireless links
Fixed routing Dynamic routing
High cost and time of deployment Very quick and cost-effective
Guaranteed bandwidth Shared radio channel
low call drops during handoffs Frequency path break due to mobility
High cost of network maintenance Maintenance operations are built-in
Low complexity of mobile devices Intelligent mobile devices are required
Reuse of frequency spectrum through Dynamic frequency reuse based on carrier
geographical channel reuse sense mechanism
Star Topology Mesh Topology
20. Define multicasting.
 A transmission method that allows copies of a single packet to be sent to a selected group
of receivers.
 In networking, multicast (one-to-many or many-to-many distribution) is group
communication where information is addressed to a group of destination computers
simultaneously.
21. How does the table driven protocol work in ad hoc networks?
 Each node maintains table(s) with routing information for every other nodes in the
network
 When the topology changes, updates are propagated throughout the network.
 Routing information is generally flooded in the whole network.
  Whenever a node requires a path to a destination, it runs an appropriate path-finding
algorithm on the topology information it maintains.
 Examples of table-driven routing protocols are:
Destination Sequenced Distance Vector routing (DSDV)
Cluster-head Gateway Switch routing (CGSR)
Wireless Routing Protocol (WRP)
22. Give the significance of the principle involved in a demand routing protocol.
 A route is established only when it is required by a source node for transmitting data
packets.
 In AODV, the source node and intermediate nodes store the next-hop information
corresponding to each flow for data packet transmission.
 Nodes that are not in a selected path do not maintain routing information or participate
in routing table exchanges
23. What are the issues in designing a MAC protocol for ad hoc wireless networks?
The following are the issues in designing a MAC protocol for ad hoc wireless networks
 Bandwidth efficiency
 Quality of service support
 Synchronization
 Hidden and exposed terminal problem
 Error-Prone Shared Broadcast Channel
 Distributed Nature/Lack of Central Coordination & Mobility of Nodes
24. List the design goals of a MAC protocol for ad hoc Wireless networks
The following are the important goals to be met while designing a medium access control (MAC)
protocol for ad hoc wireless networks:
 The operation of the protocol should be distributed.
 The protocol should provide QoS support for real-time traffic.
 The access delay, which refers to the average delay experienced by any packet to get
 transmitted, must be kept low.
 The available bandwidth must be utilized efficiently.
 The protocol should ensure fair allocation (either equal allocation or weighted allocation)
of bandwidth to nodes.
 Control overhead must be kept as low as possible.
 The protocol should minimize the effects of hidden and exposed terminal problems.
 The protocol must be scalable to large networks.
25. What is the Significance of Sequence Number
o When a node broadcasts a routing table update packet, it has to increase the sequence number
by one.
o This is used to find out the updated route packet.
o When a node receives an update packet from its neighbour node and if the sequence
number is equal to or greater than the sequence number of already received packet, then
the routing packet will be updated in the table.
o Else, the received packet will be assumed as a stale or old packet and hence discarded.

Part B
1. Explain the issues / challenges in designing Adhoc /MANET network
• Limited bandwidth:
• Wi-Fi ad hoc uses the unlicensed ISM (Industrial, Scientific, and Medical radio
bands) 2.4 GHz radios.
 • The limited radio band results in reduced data rate compared to wireless networks.
Adhoc - 54 Mbps
• Hence, optimal usage of bandwidth is necessary by keeping low overhead as
possible.
• Energy constraints: Most of the nodes rely on limited battery life. Some of the power of the
batteries is used for data transmission, data processing and for routing packets to their
destination. This is a critical issue in the design of an ad hoc network.
• Dynamic network topology: The frequent movement of nodes compounds the challenges of
designing an ad hoc network due to frequent path breaks.
• Routing overhead: Due to the mobility of nodes within the ad hoc network, stale routes are
generated in the routing table leading to routing overhead.
• Packet loss due to transmission error: The vulnerable nature of wireless networks often
lead to frequent packet loss due to traffic collision caused by hidden terminals, interference
and frequent path breaks caused by mobility of nodes.
• Frequent network partitions: The random movement of nodes often leads to network
partition. This affects mostly the intermediate nodes.
• Limited physical security threats: Mobile nodes are more vulnerable to attacks within and
outside network.
•
2. Draw the schematic diagram of an ad hoc wireless Internet and discuss the issues to be
considered for the successful ad hoc wireless Internet.
 Ad hoc wireless internet - Ad hoc networks support efficient Internet connectivity,
including mobility management.
 Each node, have an arbitrary IP address in an ad hoc network, would require a host
route propagated to every router of the fixed network; clearly, this is an unscalable
approach.
 Mobile IP is considered as an access protocol, reduces the need for host route
dissemination.
Diagram for adhoc wireless network is shown in fig

Applications of ad hoc wireless internet are :

 Wireless mesh network.
 Provisioning of temporary internet services to major conference venues.
 Sports venues.
 Temporary military settlements.
  Battlefields
 Broadband internet services in rural regions.
The major issues to be considered for a successful ad hoc wireless internet are the following :
 Gateway
o They are the entry points to the wired internet.
o Generally owned & operated by a service provider.
o They perform following tasks ,
o Keeping track of end users.
o Bandwidth management.
o Load balancing.
o Traffic shaping.
o Packet filtering.
o Bandwidth fairness &
o Address, service & location discovery.
 Address mobility
o Traditional IP addressing is not supportive of address mobility ( multiple wireless
hop) which is essential in wireless Internet
o MobileIP2 is a solution that uses an address redirection mechanism for this
address mobility issue
 Routing
o It is a major problem in ad hoc wireless internet, due to dynamic topological changes,
the presence of gateways, multi-hop relaying, & the hybrid character of the network.
o Possible solution is to use separate routing protocol for the wireless part of ad hoc
wireless internet.
 Transport layer protocol
o the state maintenance overhead at the gateway nodes.
 Load balancing
o It is necessary to distribute the load so as to avoid the situation where the gateway
nodes become bottleneck nodes.
 Pricing / Billing
o Since internet bandwidth is expensive, it becomes very important to introduce
pricing/billing strategies for the ad hoc wireless internet.
 Provisioning of security
o Security is a prime concern since the end users can utilize the ad hoc wireless
internet infrastructure to make e-commerce transaction.
 QoS support
o For Voice Over IP (VOIP) & growing multimedia applications over the internet,
QoS support in the ad hoc wireless internet becomes a very important issue.
 Service, address & location discovery
o Service discovery refers to the activity of discovering or identifying the party
which provides service or resource.
o Address discovery refers to the services such as those provided by Address
Resolution Protocol (ARP) or Domain Name Service (DNS) operating within the
wireless domain.
o Location discovery refers to different activities such as detecting the location of a
particular mobile node in the network or detecting the geographical location of
nodes.
3. Write about power management/ Energy Management in ad hoc wireless networks
 Energy management is defined as the process of managing the sources & consumers of
energy in a node or in the network for enhancing the lifetime of a network.
Features of energy management are:
 Shaping the energy discharge pattern of a node’s battery to enhance battery life.
 Finding routes that consumes minimum energy.
 Using distributed scheduling schemes to improve battery life.
 Handling the processor & interface devices to minimize power consumption.
Energy management can be classified into the following categories:
Transmission power management
 The power consumed by the Radio Frequency (RF) module of a mobile node is
determined by several factors such as
o The state of operation.
o The transmission power and
o The technology used for the RF circuitry.
Battery energy management
 The battery management is aimed at extending the battery life of a node by taking
advantage of its chemical properties, discharge patterns, and by the selection of a battery
from a set of batteries that is available for redundancy.
Processor power management
 The clock speed and the number of instructions executed per unit time are some of the
processor parameters that affect power consumption.
 The CPU can be put into different power saving modes during low processing load
conditions.
 The CPU power can be completely turned off if the machines is idle for a long time.
Devices power management
 Intelligent device management can reduce power consumption of a mobile node
significantly.
 This can be done by the operating system (OS) by selectively powering down interface
devices that are not used or by putting devices into different power saving modes,
depending on their usage.

4. Explain the applications of mobile Adhoc network/MANET (or) Explain wireless mesh
network(or) Explain how adhoc network is useful in battle field.
• Military Applications
• Collaborative and Distributed computing
• Energy Operations
• Wireless Mesh Networks
• Wireless Sensor Networks
• Hybrid Wireless Networks
Military Applications
o Establishing communication among a group of soldiers for tactical operations.
o Setting up of a fixed infrastructure for communication among group of soldiers in
enemy territories or in inhospitable terrains may not be possible.
o In such a case, adhoc wireless networks provide required communication mechanism
quickly.
o The primary nature of the communication required in a military environment enforces
certain important requirements on adhoc wireless networks namely, Reliability,
Efficiency, Secure communication & Support for multicast routing.
Collaborative & Distributed computing
o Adhoc wireless network helps in collaborative computing, by establishing temporary
communication infrastructure for quick communication with minimal
configuration among a group of people in a conference.
o In distributed file sharing application reliability is of high importance which
would be provided by adhoc network.
o Other applications such as streaming of multimedia objects among participating
nodes in ad hoc wireless networks require support for soft real-time communication
o Devices used for such applications could typically be laptops with add -on wireless
interface cards, enhanced personal digital assistants (PDAs) or mobile devices with
high processing power

Emergency Operations
o Ad hoc wireless networks are very useful in emergency operations such as search
and rescue, crowd control and commando operations.
o The major factors that favour ad hoc wireless networks for such tasks are self-
configuration of the system with minimal overhead, independent of fixed or
centralised infrastructure, the freedom and flexibility of mobility, and
unavailability of conventional communication infrastructure.
o In environments, where the conventional infrastructure based communication
facilities are destroyed due to a war or due to natural calamities, immediate
deployment of adhoc wireless networks would be a good solution for co-
ordinating rescue activities.
o They require minimum initial network configuration with very little or no delay
Wireless Mesh Network
o Wireless mesh networks are adhoc wireless network that are formed to provide an
alternate communication infrastructure for mobile or fixed nodes/users, without
the spectrum reuse constraint & requirement of network planning of cellular network.
o It provides many alternate paths for a data transfer session between a source &
destination, resulting in quick reconfiguration of the path when the existing path
fails due to node failure.
o Since the infrastructure built is in the form of small radio relaying devices, the
investment required in wireless mesh networks is much less than what is required
for the cellular network counterpart.
 o Each node is connected to every other node, forming a "mesh, comprises various
wireless nodes with access points
o Each node in the network acts as a forwarding node to transfer the data.
o Since the network is decentralized, forwarding of data is possible only to the
neighbouring node. This results in the network structure simple and easy.
o Wireless mesh networks should be capable of self-organization and maintenance.
o It operates at license-free ISM band around 2.4 GHz & 5 GHz.
o It is scaled well to provide support to large number of points.
o WMN makes the people connected with the Internet who work at remote areas and
operating business.
o The possible deployment scenarios of wireless mesh networks include: residential
zones, highways, business zones, important civilian regions and university campuses
o Major advantage is the support for a high data rate, quick & low cost of deployment,
enhanced services, high scalability, easy extendibility, high availability & low cost
per bit.
Wireless Sensor Networks
o The Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are special category of Adhoc wireless
network that are used to provide a wireless communication infrastructure among the
sensors deployed in a specific application domain
o Sensor nodes are tiny devices that have capability of sensing physical parameters
processing the data gathered, & communication to the monitoring system.

Hybrid Wireless Networks

o Hybrid wireless architecture such as Multi-hop Cellular Network [MCN] &
Integrated Cellular Adhoc Relay [iCAR].
o The primary concept behind cellular networks is geographical channel reuse.
o Several techniques like cell sectoring, cell resizing and multi-tier cells increase the
capacity of cellular networks.
 o MCNs combine the reliability & support of fixed base station of cellular network with
flexibility & multi - hop relaying adhoc wireless networks.
o Major advantages are:
o Higher capacity.
o Increased flexibility & reliability in routing.
o Better coverage & connectivity
5. Explain the difference between infrastructure and infrastructure less network/ adhoc
network

Infrastructure network Infrastructure less network

Nodes are connected with the fixed physical
representation
Communication Through an Access Point (AP),
APs act as a bridge to other wireless/wired network.
More security options
Range is determined by the range and
number of access points
Faster speed
Designing is simple as most of the network
functionality lies within AP and client is just a
simple machine
Most infrastructure based WLAN uses TDMA-
based protocols.
Infrastructure less where the node is
communicated without any fixed physical
representation
Communication - Directly between devices, no
access point control is needed.
no security.
Restricted to the range of individual devices on
the network
Slow
As no central co-ordination exists, it needs to use
decentralized MAC (Medium Access Control)
protocols such as CSMA(Carrier Sense Multiple
Access)/CA (Collision Avoidance), with all nodes
having same functionality. This shoots up the
complexity and cost.
Most Ad-hoc based WLAN uses contention MAC
protocols (e.g. CSMA).

6. Explain any one of the suitable protocol for ad hoc network that maintains up to date
the routing information (or) Write about the types of ad hoc network routing protocols
based on routing information update mechanism(or) Analyze the operation of
destination sequenced distance- vector routing protocol with an example .(or) Evaluate
whether the Table driven routing protocol is suitable high mobility environment.(or)
explain proactive routing protocol(or) explain route establishment and maintenance in
DSDV protocol
 “Table-driven” - Each node maintains table(s) with routing information for every other
nodes in the network
 When the topology changes, updates are propagated throughout the network.
 Routing information is generally flooded in the whole network.
 Whenever a node requires a path to a destination, it runs an appropriate path-finding
 algorithm on the topology information it maintains.
Destination Sequenced Distance Vector routing protocol
 Based on the Bellman-Ford algorithm
  Each mobile node maintains a routing table, in terms of number of hops to each
destination
 Routing table updates are periodically broadcasted
 Each node broadcasts a table and based upon this, other nodes broadcasts the updated
routing
 Those nodes which are unreachable directly are labelled as “infinite”.
 But, this updation of routing tables keeps on happening and an infinite loop is generated
which is commonly known as Count-To-Infinity problem.
 To overcome this, Each entry in the table is marked by a sequence number, it helps to
distinguish stale routes from new ones, and thereby avoiding loops
 To minimize the routing updates, variable sized update packets are used,
 Depending on the number of topological changes
Destination Sequenced Distance Vector Routing: Concept
 DSDV protocol uses and maintains a single table only, for every node individually. The table
contains the following parameters.

Node Destination Next Hop Distance SEQ No

 This table is updated on every step and ensures that each node broadcast as well as receives
correct information about all the nodes including their distance and sequence number.
Routing table updation can be sent to other nodes in two ways :
o In full dump update method, a node sends the whole routing table to the neighbors
o and thereby increases network overhead.
o In incremental update method, only the recent updated entries are sent. The incremental
update method is more suitable when the network is large and stable so that heavy traffic can
be avoided.
Table Maintenance in DSDV
 The steps followed for maintaining a routing table at each node is given below,
o Each node receives the route information with most recent sequence number from
other nodes and updates its table.
o The node looks at its routing table in order to determine the shortest path to reach
all the destinations.
o According to the shortest path information, each node constructs another routing
table where the node has recently updated route information to reach destination
with minimum distance.
o This new routing table will be broadcast to its neighbours.
o On receipt of these messages, the neighbour nodes update its routing table.
The procedure for updating metric field in the routing table update packet is as follows,
o The routing table update packet starts with a metric of one.
o When the neighbour nodes receive this packet, it will increment this metric by one
and then re-broadcast the updated packet to its neighbours.
o This process will be repeated until all the nodes in the network receive the copy of
update message.
o In the following figure the node 11 is moved so the path between 10 to 11 is broken
up, new table is updated and broadcast to other node.
Example :
Route Establishment
Consider the example as shown in Figure (a). Here node 1 is the source node and node
15 is the destination. As all the nodes maintain global topology information, the route is
 already available as shown in Figure (b). Here the routing table of node 1 indicates that
the shortest route to the destination node (node 15) is available through node 5 and the
distance to it is 4 hops, as depicted in Figure (b).

Fig 1 Route establishment in DSDV.

Route Maintenance
Node 11 moves from its current position, as shown in Figure b . When a neighbor node
perceives the link break, it sets all the paths passing through the broken link with
distance as ∞. For example, when node 10 knows about the link break, it sets the path to
node 11 as ∞ and broadcasts its routing table to its neighbors. Those neighbors detecting
significant changes in their routing tables rebroadcast it to their neighbors. In this way,
the broken link information propagates throughout the network. Node 1 also sets the
distance to node 11 as ∞. When node 14 receives a table update message from node 11, it
informs the neighbors about the shortest distance to node 11. This information is also
propagated throughout the network. All nodes receiving the new update message with the
higher sequence number set the new distance to node 11 in their corresponding tables.
The updated table at node 1 is shown in Figure 7.6, where the current distance from node
1 to node 11 has increased from three to four hops.

Advantages
 Less delay involved in the route setup process.
 Mechanism of incremental update with sequence number tags makes the existing wired
network protocols adaptable to ad hoc wireless networks.
  The updates are propagated throughout the network in order to maintain an up-to- date view
of the network topology at all nodes.
Disadvantages
o The updates due to broken links lead to a heavy control overhead during high mobility.
o Even a small network with high mobility or a large network with low mobility can
completely choke the available bandwidth.
o Suffers from excessive control overhead.
o In order to obtain information about a particular destination node, a node has to wait for a
table update message initiated by the same destination node.

7. Explain the Characteristics of an Ideal Routing Protocol for Ad Hoc Wireless Networks
1. It must be fully distributed, Distributed routing is more fault tolerant than centralized
routing, which involves the risk of single point of failure.
2. It must be adaptive to frequent topology changes caused by the mobility of nodes.
3. Route computation and maintenance must involve a minimum number of nodes. Each
node in the network must have quick access to routes, that is, minimum connection setup time
is desired.
4. It must be localized,
5. It must be loop-free and free from stale routes.
6. The number of packet collisions must be kept to a minimum by limiting the number of
broadcasts made by each node. The transmissions should be reliable to reduce message loss
and to prevent the occurrence of stale routes.
7. It must converge to optimal routes once the network topology becomes stable. The
convergence must be quick.
8. Optimum use of resources such as bandwidth, computing power, memory, and battery
power.
9. Every node in the network should try to store information regarding the stable local
topology only.
10. It should be able to provide a certain level of quality of service (QoS) as demanded by
the applications, and should also offer support for time-sensitive traffic.

8. Write Issues in Designing a Routing Protocol for Ad Hoc Wireless Networks

The major challenges that a routing protocol designed for ad hoc wireless networks faces are:
• Mobility of nodes
• Bandwidth Constraints
• Error-Prone channel state
• Hidden Terminal Problem
• Exposed Terminal Problems
• Resource Constraints
Mobility
o Network topology is highly dynamic due to movement of nodes. Hence, an ongoing
session suffers frequent path breaks.
o Disruption occurs due to the movement of either intermediate nodes in the path or end
nodes.
o Wired network routing protocols cannot be used in adhoc wireless networks because the
nodes are here are not stationary and the convergence is very slow in wired networks.
o Routing protocols for ad hoc wireless networks must be able to perform efficient
and effective mobility management.
Bandwidth Constraint
 o Abundant bandwidth is available in wired networks due to the advent of fiber optics and
due to the exploitation of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technologies.
o In a wireless network, the radio band is limited, and hence the data rates it can offer are
much less than what a wired network can offer.
o This requires that the routing protocols use the bandwidth optimally by keeping the
overhead as low as possible.
o The limited bandwidth availability also imposes a constraint on routing protocols in
maintaining the topological information.
Error-prone shared broadcast radio channel
o The wireless links have time-varying characteristics in terms of link capacity and link-
error probability.
o This requires that the adhoc wireless network routing protocol interact with the MAC
layer to find alternate routes through better-quality links.
o Transmissions in ad hoc wireless networks result in collisions of data and control packets.
o Therefore, it is required that ad hoc wireless network routing protocols find paths with
less congestion.
Hidden Terminal Problem
o The hidden terminal problem refers to the collision of packets at a receiving node due to
the simultaneous transmission of those nodes that are not within the direct transmission
range of the receiver, but are within the transmission range of the receiver.
o Collision occurs when both nodes transmit packets at the same time without knowing
about the transmission of each other.

o For example, if both node A and node C transmit to node B at the same time, their
packets collide at node B. This is due to the fact that both node A and C are hidden from
each other, as they are not within the direct transmission range of each other and hence do
not know about the presence of each other.
o Solution for this problem include medium access collision avoidance (MACA)

o Transmitting node first explicitly notifies all potential hidden nodes about the
forthcoming transmission by means of a two way handshake control protocol called RTS-
CTS protocol exchange. This may not solve the problem completely but it reduces the
probability of collisions.
Exposed Terminal Problem
o The exposed terminal problem refers to the inability of a node which is blocked due to
transmission by a nearby transmitting node to transmit to another node.
o For example, consider the figure, Here, if a transmission from node B to another node A
is already in progress, node C cannot transmit to node D, as it concludes that its neighbor
 node B, is in transmitting mode and hence should not interfere with the on-going
transmission. Thus, reusability of the radio spectrum is affected.

o Solution for this problem, : In this case, node A did not successfully receive the CTS
originated by node R and hence assumes that there is no on- going transmission in the
neighborhood. Since node A is hidden from node T, any attempt to originate its own RTS
would result in collision of the on-going transmission between nodes T and R.

Solution for Exposed Terminal Problem

Resource Constraints
o Two essential and limited resources are battery life and processing power.
o Devices used in adhoc wireless networks require portability, and hence they also have
size and weight constraints along with the restrictions on the power source.
o Increasing the battery power and processing ability makes the nodes bulky and less
portable.
9. Design an ad hoc wireless network with nodes and demonstrate the process of route
establishment and route maintenance using the on demand routing protocol(or) Explain
how route is established/discovery and maintained in an ad hoc network using AODV
routing protocol.(or) Explain in detail the various algorithms of reactive routing
protocols
 This protocol is an example of reactive routing protocol which does not maintain routes
but build the routes as per requirements. That means, Route is established only when it is
required by a source node for transmitting data packets.
 The major difference between AODV and other on-demand routing protocol is that it uses
a destination sequence number ( DestSeqNum) to determine an up-to-date path to the
destination.
 Destination sequence numbers are used to ensure that routes are loop free and has the
most recent route information. A node updates its path information only if the
DestSeqNum of the current packet received is greater than the last DestSeqNum stored at
the node.
 AODV utilizes routing tables to store routing information. Routing table consists of
destination address, next hop address, destination sequence number ( DestSeqNum), hop
count and life time.
 Route Request (RREQ) and Route Response (RRESP) packets are used in which RREQ
is responsible for discovering of route from source to destination and RRESP sends back
the route information response to its source.
Route Discovery
 In AODV, each node maintains a routing cache to save the information about the
reachable destinations.
 When o a node wants to transmit a packet to the destination the sender node initiates to
broadcast the RREQ packet.
 All the neighbouring nodes receive the RREQ packet and rebroadcast it if it is not the
intended recipient.
 The RREQ contains the following information.
o ID of source node
o ID of destination node
o Most recent sequence number
o Broadcast ID
o Hop count
o Time-to-live.
 Each broadcast packet contains broadcast ID.
 The hop count is the number of hops the packet passes through to discover the destination.
 If any one of the neighboring nodes which had received the RREQ packet and knows the path
for destination, then it sends RREP packet through a selected path to the sender node.
 Otherwise, the neighbor node rebroadcasts the RREQ packet.
Example
 Consider a network containing 5 nodes that are “X”, “Y”, “Z”,”T”,”D” present at unit distance
from each other, where “X” being the source node and “D” being the destination node.

Sample Network of AODV

 The IP addresses of source node “X” and destination node “D” is already known.
 Step 1: Source node “X” will send Route Request i.e. RREQ packet to its neighbours “Y” and
“Z”.
 Step 2: Node “Y” & “Z” will check for route and will respond using RRESP packet back to
source “X”. Here in this case “Z” is the last node but the destination. It will send the RREQ
packet to “X” stating “Route Not Found”. But node “Y” will send RRESP packet stating “Route
Found” and it will further broadcast the RRESP to node “T”.
 Step 3: Now the field of net hop in the RREQ format will be updated, Node “T” will send back
the “Route Found” message to Node “Y” and will update the next hop field further.
 Step 4: Then Node “T” will broadcast and RREQ packet to Node “D”, which is the destination
and the next hop field is further updated. Then it will send RRES packet to “T” which will further
be sent back to the source node “X” via node “Y” and Node “T” resulting in generation of an
optimal path. The updated network would be:
Route Maintenance
 If intermediate nodes or the destination move.
  The next hop links break.
 Routing tables are updated for the link failures.
 All active neighbors are informed by RouteError (REER) packet.
 When a source node receives an RRER, it can reinitiate the route discovery process.

Advantages
• Dynamic networks can be handled easily.
• No loop generation.
Disadvantages
• A delayed protocol because of its route discovery process.
• High bandwidth requirement.’

10. How is the loop free property ensured in an on demand routing protocol and in table
driven routing protocol?
 When a data packet is continually routed through the same routers over and over is
called routing loop.
 It is a serious problem since routing loops not only consume a lot of bandwidth but
also cause inaccessible network.
 Loop free routing is achieved by using a combination of timestamps or sequence
numbers
 Timestamps is the need for a globally synchronized clock at all nodes, whereas
sequence numbers would need to be reset eventually, which requires reliable
broadcasts

DSDV Protocol

 Each node maintain a routing table.

 Each entry in the routing table contains a sequence number, if there is link present
the sequence numbers are even otherwise an odd number is used.
 When a node broadcasts a routing table update packet, it has to increase the sequence
number by one. This is used to find out the updated route packet.
 When a node receives an update packet from its neighbour node and if the sequence
number is equal to or greater than the sequence number of already received packet,
then the routing packet will be updated in the table. Else, the received packet will be
assumed as a stale or old packet and hence discarded.
On demand routing protocol
 On demand routing protocol routing table consists of destination address, next hop
address, destination sequence number ( DestSeqNum), hop count and life time.
 During the route search phase, the source node floods the RouteRequest packet in the
network when a route is not available for the desired destination.
 Destination sequence number ( DestSeqNum) to determine an up-to-date path to the
destination.
 Destination sequence numbers are used to ensure that routes are loop free and has the
most recent route information.
  A node updates its path information only if the DestSeqNum of the current packet
received is greater than the last DestSeqNum stored at the node.

11. What is MAC protocol ? and explain the issue of Medium Access Control in adhoc
network
MAC provides fair access to shared broadcast radio channel to all node.
The purpose of this protocol is to achieve a distributed FIFO schedule among multiple nodes
in an ad hoc network. The major issues in MAC protocol are as follows:
 Distributed Operation: The MAC protocol design should be fully distributed involving
minimum control overhead, because it need to operate in environment without centralized
device.
 Synchronization: The synchronization is mandatory for TDMA-based systems for
management of transmission and reception slots.
 Hidden Terminals Problem: Hidden terminals are nodes that are hidden (or not reachable)
from the sender of a data transmission session, but are reachable to the receiver of the session.

Collisions at receiver node -> inefficient bandwidth utilization, reduce throughput.

 Exposed Terminals Problem: The nodes that are in the transmission range of the sender of
an on-going session, are prevented from making a transmission. The exposed nodes should be
allowed to transmit in a controlled fashion without causing collision to the on-going data
transfer.

 Throughput: The MAC protocol employed in ad hoc wireless networks should attempt to
maximize the throughput of the system. The important considerations for throughput
enhancement are
a. Minimizing the occurrence of collisions.
b. Maximizing channel utilization
c. Minimizing control overhead.
 Access delay: The average delay that any packet experiences to get transmitted. The MAC
protocol should attempt to minimize the delay.
 Fairness: Fairness refers to the ability of the MAC protocol to provide an equal share of the
bandwidth to all competing nodes. Fairness can be either node-based or flow-based.
 Real-time Traffic support: In a contention-based channel access environment, without any
central coordination, with limited bandwidth, and with location- dependent contention,
supporting time- sensitive traffic such as voice, video, and real-time data requires explicit
support from the MAC protocol.
 Resource reservation: The provisioning of QoS defined by parameters such as bandwidth,
delay, and jitter requires reservation of resources such as bandwidth, buffer space, and
processing power.
 Ability to measure resource availability: The MAC protocol should be able to provide an
estimation of resource availability at every node. This can also be used for making congestion
control decisions.
 Capability for power control: The transmission power control reduces the energy
consumption at the nodes, causes a decrease in interference at neighboring nodes, and
increases frequency reuse.
 Adaptive rate control: This refers to the variation in the data bit rate achieved over a
channel. A MAC protocol that has adaptive rate control can make use of a high data rate.