Improving route stability in mobile ad hoc networks based on link lifetime

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have dynamic topology since all nodes have a random mobility behavior, which increases rerouting frequency and degrades communication performance. A more stable route can prolong route lifetime and reduce rerouting frequency. This paper proposes a Link lifetime based Backup Routing (LBR) protocol to improve route stability. LBR is based on link lifetime. It obtains the shortest path between source and destination through limited flooding as the primary path, and then sets up a local backup path for each link in the primary path concerning link lifetime. This scheme effectively avoids backup paths being out-of-date prematurely and increases the availability of backup paths. Both theoretical analyses and simulation results show that LBR has an improvement in route lifetime, packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay, and so on, compared with singlepath routing protocols.