Mobility, route caching, and TCP performance in mobile ad hoc networks

In a mobile ad hoc network, mobile nodes communicate with each other through wireless links. Mobility causes frequent topology changes. This thesis addresses the fundamental challenges mobility presents to on-demand routing protocols and to TCP.; On-demand routing protocols use route caches to make routing decisions. Due to mobility, cached routes easily become stale. To address the cache staleness issue, prior work used adaptive timeout mechanisms. However, heuristics cannot accurately estimate time outs because topology changes are unpredictable. I propose to proactively disseminate the broken link information to the nodes that have cached the link. I define a new cache structure called a cache table to maintain the information necessary for cache updates, and design a distributed cache update algorithm. This algorithm is the first work that proactively updates route caches in an adaptive manner. Simulation results show that proactive cache updating is more efficient than adaptive timeout mechanisms. I conclude that proactive cache updating is the key to the adaptation of on-demand routing protocols to mobility.; TCP does not perform well in mobile ad hoc networks. Prior work provided link failure feedback to TCP so that it can avoid invoking congestion control mechanisms for packet losses caused by route failures. Simulation results show that my cache update algorithm significantly improves TCP throughput since it reduces the effect of mobility on TCP. TCP still suffers from frequent data and ACK losses. I propose to make routing protocols aware of lost TCP packets and help reduce TCP timeouts. I design two mechanisms that exploit cross-layer information awareness: early packet loss notification (EPLN) and best-effort ACK delivery (BEAD). EPLN notifies senders about lost data. BEAD retransmits ACKs at intermediate nodes or at receivers. Simulation results show that the two mechanisms significantly improve TCP throughput. I conclude that cross-layer information awareness is the key to making TCP efficient in the presence of mobility.; I also study the impact of caching strategies on the scalability of on-demand routing protocols with mobility. I show that making route caches adapt quickly and efficiently to topology changes is the key to the scalability of on-demand routing protocols with mobility.