JOURNAL OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES 1

A New Route Maintenance Approach for Dynamic Source Routing Protocol in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks
Ragb O. M. Saleh , Md Yazid Mohd Saman and Mohd Nordin Abdul Rahman
Abstract - The Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) is a routing protocol for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs). DSR typically utilizes mechanisms for route discovery and route maintenance. It depends on the route maintenance mechanism to increase delivery ratio, reduce the routing overhead and route discovery latency. The mobility of nodes can cause routes to become unfeasible and data packets may be dropped. In this paper, we propose a new packet salvaging approach to route maintenance mechanism. This mechanism is invoked only when a failure link is detected during data transmission; at the same time, salvaging process starts by the node which cannot send a packet to next hop in the source route. As soon as first attempt has failed, intermediate nodes will attempt to salvage data packets rather than waiting for a new route discovery mechanism. Data salvaging process works by adding information into the route error packet, which aid upstream nodes to find alternative route for prevent data packets from drop. To evaluate our approach, we have added it to the DSR protocol and evaluated its impact on the performance using detailed simulations. The results show that the proposed salvaging approach significantly improves the performance of DSR in terms of packet delivery ratio, routing overhead and dropped packets. Keywords: Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, MANETs, Dynamic Source Routing, DSR.

1- INTRODUCTION
Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks (MANETs) unlike traditional wireless networks that need an expensive infrastructure to support mobility. MANETs do not need the expensive or wired infrastructure. MANTs are completely infrastructure-less. This kind of network is called infrastructure-less network or ad hoc network. In MANET each node is connected through wireless links with other nodes. Since nodes are communicating by radio waves. These nodes get connected to each other and also act as a router by forwarding data to other wireless nodes. Because of the limited transmission range of mobile nodes, more than one hop may be needed to send and receive data across the wireless network. In order to facilitate communication within the network, a routing protocol is used to discover paths between nodes. Nodal mobility can cause unpredictable network topology changes in MANETs. Thus, a highly adaptive routing strategy is required to deal with the dynamic topology. The main aim of such a MANET routing protocol is a valid and efficient path between a pair of nodes. Several classes of routing protocols for changed topology MANETs have been proposed. They can be classified into two categories [1], [2]: reactive and proactive routing protocols. Proactive routing protocols require periodic dissemination of routing information in order that all nodes are able to calculate routes to other nodes, while reactive routing protocols are on-demand route acquisition systems wherein a node sends a route request whenever it needs to send a message to a node for which a route does not already exist. Reactive routing protocols are also called "On-demand" routing protocols. In general, on-demand routing protocols are more scalable, thus they produce less overhead, and are suitable for highly dynamic ad hoc networks. Many efforts have been made to design on-

demand routing protocols that enhance network performance. The Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) and Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector routing (AODV) are the most popular on-demand routing protocols for MANETs [3], [4], [5], [6]. This paper has organized as following; in Section 2 presents a brief overview of the DSR protocol. In section 3 related studies are described. Section 4 explains the proposed mechanism in detail. Section 6 presents the simulation result and finally section 7 concludes this paper.

2. THE DYNAMIC SOURCE ROUTING (DSR) PROTOCOL

2.1. Overview - DSR protocol is a reactive unicast routing protocol that utilizes Source Routing (SR) [6], [7]. SR is a routing technique in which the source of a packet determines the complete sequence of nodes through which the packet has to pass. The data packets carry the source route in the packet header. That is, the sender knows the complete hop-by-hop route to the destination. These routes are stored in a route cache. DSR applies on demand schemes for both route discovery and route maintenance. The route discovery mechanism: When a source node in the ad hoc network wants to send packets to the destination node but no route is available, it initiates a route discovery mechanism to dynamically determine such a route. Route discovery mechanism works by flooding the network with route request (RREQ) packets. Each intermediate node receiving an RREQ rebroadcasts it to its neighbors, unless it is the destination or it has a route to the destination in its route cache. Any nodes that have received the same RREQ message will not broadcast it again. Route replay (RREP) packet is sent back to the source node either by destination or an intermediate node

having a route to the destination. When the RREP packet traverses backward to the source, the source and all traversed nodes will cache the route to the destination in its route cache for future use. If a source route is broken, the source node is notified using a route error (RERR) packet. When the source node and the intermediate nodes receive the route error packet, they will erase all the routes that use the broken link from their route cache. A new route discovery process must be initiated by the source node if this route is still desired. DSR protocol allows a node to overhear or listen to packets in promiscuous mode, thus a node learns useful information (e.g. route, RERR, etc.). The route maintenance mechanism [8],[9] is applied only when the source route breaks during a session. In this case, when a node on a packet's source route discovers that it cannot forward the packet, the node sends to the source of the packet a RERR packet, RERR packet back to sender. Sender after receiving RERR packet may use different route or may restart route discovery. At the same time, the node that detects next hop in the route is unreachable, uses packet salvaging mechanism to attempt to salvage the packet by checking its own route cache to find alternate route to the packets destination and forward it via this alternative route. Additional route maintenance feature is automatically shortening routes mechanism, source routes in use may be automatically shortened if one or more intermediate hops in the route become no longer necessary. DSR caches multiple routes per destination and the node can enter into sleep mode to save power and bandwidth, also the path calculated in DSR is loop-free.

packet. Secondly, it uses salvaging mechanism to salvage this packet. It searches to an alternate route for packet transmission to its destination D. If a route is found (such as A-B-D), Lwill use it to forward the packet to D, thereby Lsalvages the packet. If no alternate route is found, Ldiscards this packet.

3. RELATED WORK
In [15], Goff et al. propose a preemptive route maintenance extension to on-demand routing protocols. Its aim is to find an alternative path before the cost of a link failure is incurred. The received transmission power is used to estimate when a link is expected to break. A link is considered likely to break when the power of the signal received over it is close to the minimum detectable power. Route repair is the responsibility of a source node after receiving a warning about the imminence of a link break on an active route to a destination. This mechanism has been applied to DSR; AODV is also considered, but only superficially. In [12], a link status prediction algorithm is developed and added to DSR. Every mobile node monitors the received unicast packets signal power strength. It predicts the link status after receiving three packets. When the link enters critical state, the node will send a Prediction Route Error message to the source node of the packet. After receiving a Route Error message, the source node will initiate a Route Request message and broadcast it if it cannot find an alternative route to the destination and also has packets to deliver. When a node receives a Route Request, it will check if it comes from an upstream node of a soon-to-be-broken link. If it is, the Route Request is discarded. The results have shown that the total no route packets dropped are reduced. At the same time, the total number of control messages increased. In [15], Park and others proposed anticipated route maintenance (ARM) protocol. ARM is a distributed algorithm, which aims to predict route failure and performs preventative route maintenance by utilizing only local geographic information to increase a route lifetime by expanding the routes. In ARM, a node can predict its neighbors disappearance and, if there are available nodes, it will choose a node to bridge the break for keeping the route connected. The benefits of ARM are reducing the need to find new routes, and prevent interruptions in routing process. ARM itself depends on another MANET routing protocol to perform route discovery process, or searching route. ARM can be embedded into any on-demand routing protocol (such as DSR protocol).

2.2. Packet salvaging in DSR protocol Route failures have a significant negative impact on packet delivery ratio. Clearly, packet dropping and high delay are the main outcomes of route failures. DSR protocol provides another route maintenance method defined as packet salvaging [9], [10], [11]. It is a mechanism utilized by an intermediate node to avoid dropping data packets. When an intermediate node forwarding a packet fails to receive delivery acknowledgement from the next hop of packets source route, immediately sends a route error (R.ERR) packet back to the source of the packet, and then check its route cache for an alternate route to the destination. If it finds a route to that destination, it will salvages the packet by replacing the broken source route for the packet with the new alternate route; and forwards the packet via this alternate route to the destination. On the other hand, it drops the packet if it has not an alternate route to the destination in its route cache. Each source route includes a Salvage Count (SC) to avoid the possibility of infinite looping of a packet. The SC shows how many times the packet has been salvaged. Packets with SC larger than predetermined value cannot be salvaged again. For example; Figure (1) shows a destination node named D tries to send a packet to a source node S through source route (J-K-L-M-D). When the node Ldetects that the next hop is unreachable. Firstly, L sends to the source of the packet S a route error (R.ERR)

4. PROPOSED MECHANISM
In this paper, we proposed a new packet salvaging mechanism for DSR protocol, which aims to reduce dropped packets for improve the performance of DSR protocol. It is invoked only when a failure link is detected during data transmission. Salvaging process actually starts by the node which cannot send a packet to next hop in the source route. The proposed mechanism has three cases to salvage a packet as the following: Case1: When a node on a source route cannot forward a data packet to next-hop; firstly, it will check its route cache for an alternate route to the destination. If such a route is found, the node uses it to forward the packet to its destination. Secondly, it sends to the source of the packet a route error message (R.ERR) with a flag, named FLAG, set to True. If there is no a route is found, the node that has discovered the link error sends a R.ERR to the source with FLAG= False (which mean R.ERR message for unsalvaged data packet). Case2: When an intermediate node receives R.ERR with FLAG=False, it will checks its route cache for an alternate route to the destination. If it has an alternate route, it will send a R.REP to the node that detected the broken link, and switches FLAG to True, and forward the R.ERR to the source. Case3: When a R.ERR reaches the source with FLAG=False, the source itself checks its route cache for an alternate route to the destination. If it finds such route, it will be send to the node that discovered the broken link for salvage the packet.
RREP_Pkt

Check_RC() SC

X NodeAddr ScrAddr DestAddr BrknNodeAddr

A route reply packet (a route replies by the destination or intermediate node to the source node). A procedure to find a specific route in the nodes cache. A counter to determine the number of tries to salvaging a specific data packet. The Permitted number of attempts to salvage the packet of data. The node address. The source node address. The destination node address.

The address of node which discovered the broken link in the source route. The address of node which UnreachNodeAdr caused the broken link in the source route. The route which contain the Stall_Route broken link. The subordinate route between the node which discovered the SR` broken link and the node which discovered the alternative route. Table 1: Common pseudo-code variables

When a node cannot send a data packet to next hop on the source route (RS), we execute the savaging algorithm to salvage data packets during data transmission process.

The pseudo code of our method is presented below (*).

5- THE RITHM:

PSEUDO-CODE OF THE PROPOSED ALGO-

6. SIMULATION AND RESULTS

To evaluate the performance improvement made by the proposed strategy, we compared it to the original DSR.

In this section, we present a pseudo-code to describe the details of the presented salvaging algorithm.
Variable S D SR Data_Pkt RC R R` Node.next Node.prev Description The source node which wants to send data packets to a specific destination node. The destination node of data. The source route which selected by the source to send data packets to a specific destination. A data packet Rote cache (it is provided to store source routes). A route between two nodes. An alternative source route. The next node of the current node on the source route. The previous node of the current node on the source route. An acknowledgement packet (sends by a receiver node to notify the sender node on the source route). A flag to show the salvaging status (True/False). A route error packet (to notify the source route when there is a broken link on the source route)

6.1. Simulation Model The simulation study was conducted in the GloMoSim [13]. In our simulation, the mobility model was the random way point model. We ran our simulation with 50 nodes with maximum transmission range 250m were generated randomly in a simulation area (2200m x 600m) modeling 900sec of simulated time for each run. Each node begins the simulation by selecting a random destination in the simulation area and moving to that destination at a speed distributed uniformly between 0 and a maximum velocity of vmax , here we chose vmax = (5, 15 and 25m/sec). The traffic sources are constant bit rate (CBR) sources with 10 source nodes. Each packet is 64 byte, while the transmission rate is 5 packet/ sec, and movement patterns for 4 different pause times are: 0, 300, 600, and 900 sec. 6.2. Performance Metrics Three performance metrics are evaluated [14]: - Packet delivery fraction: the ratio of the data packets delivered to the destination to those generated by the sources. - Routing overhead fraction: the ratio of the total number of routing packets transmitted to the number of data packets received.

Ack

Slvg RERR_Pkt

- Dropped packets: the data packets that are dropped during the link breaks and collision.

6.3. Observed Results: We report the results of the simulation experiments for the original DSR protocol and the improved DSR protocol by new salvaging method (DSRsalvg). The simulation is averaged for 10 sessions of the runs, and our reported result described as the following: - Packet delivery ratio: Fig. 2 is intended to compare the packet delivery ratio, obtained by varying the pause time with three different vmax (5, 15 and 25m/sec) when the original DSR and the improved DSR (DSRsalvg) are used. It can be seen that slight increasing in the delivery ratio were obtained from DSRsalvg due to high mobility which increase the possibility to fail salvaging process. As the mobility rate decreases, DSRsalvg introduces more enhanced in delivery ratio due to successful salvaging processes compared to original DSR. However, increasing the possibility of salvaged packets gives our scheme (DSRsalvg) better delivery ratio than original DSR.
- Routing overhead: Fig. 3 shows the routing overhead with respect to the pause time. The overhead for both schemes increases when the mobile nodes move more rapidly because high mobility is more prone to link failures, which may force the protocol to invoke new route discovery processes; subsequently, cause more and more overhead. In both low and high mobility mode DSRsalvg introduces less overhead compared to original DSR. The reduced overhead is due to successful salvaging processes and that free route reply R.REPs which send from intermediate nodes or source node to the node that discovered the broken link (Broken-Node) to salvage data packets. Wherever the R.REP packets traverse to BrokenNode, all traversed nodes will cache those routes for future use. In this manner, those nodes may do not need to recall a new route discovery for more than needed route. However, our scheme outperforms original DSR in both low and high mobility environment. - Number of Drop packets: Fig. 4 shows the dropped packet ratio with respect to the pause time. The dropped packet ratio increases when the mobile nodes move more rapidly because high mobility is more prone to link failures; also, when nodes which discovered link failures fail to salvage those data packets which face broken links. In both low and high mobility environment DSRsalvg introduces less dropped packet ratio compared to original DSR. The reduced dropped packet ratio is due to successful packets salvaging processes. However, DSRsalvg outperforms original DSR in both low and high mobility environment.

Fig. 2: Packet Delivery Ratio (vmax=5, 15 and 25m/sec)

Fig.3: Routing Overhead (vmax=5, 15 and 25m/sec)

Fig.4: Number of drop packet (vmax=5, 15 and 25 m/sec)

7. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have improved DSR protocol for ad hoc networks. We have added the proposed packet salvaging mechanism to DSR protocol which developed to salvage data packets before they discard by node that discovered the broken link. The performance of the improved DSR Protocol has been evaluated and compared with original DSR using detailed simulations. Several common performance metrics are considered. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm performs well; it can overall generate lower overhead, fewer dropped packets and higher delivery ratio.

8. REFERENCES
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AUTHORS
Ragb O. M. Saleh He has completed his Bachelors degree in Computer Science from Naser University (Libya) in 1998, and the M.S. degree from Al Al Bayt University at Mafraq (Jordan) in 2007. He is currently working towards his Doctorate degree at University Malaysia Terengganu.His research interests are in networking, including wireless ad-hoc netwrks. Md Yazid Mohd Saman Heis a Professor of Computer Science in the field of Parallel and Distributed Systems.He has been in the academia for over 20 years, starting in UPM Serdang as a Tutor and Lecturer, then in KUSTEM since 2001, and until now in UMT.He has published over journal and conference papers in the areas of parallel & distributed systems, multimedia technologies and simulation. His research interests are in Distributed, Parallel Computing, Computer Networks, Simulation and Performance Modelling. Mohd Nordin Abdul Rahman He is working as AssociateProf., and Dean of Faculty of In-

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formatics, Universiti Sultan ZainalAbidin, Malaysia. He has more than 15 years of teaching and haspublished numbers of papers in referred international journals.

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