Enhancement in Cross-Layer Routing in Mobile Adhoc Networks

As Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) gains popularity, the need for suitable ad hoc MAC and routing protocols will continue to grow. Cross-layer design is an emerging proposal to support flexible layer approaches in MANETs. Various algorithms were proposed to improve the packet delivery ratio and fairness among flows for multi-hop ad hoc networks through cross-layer interaction between MAC and the routing layer. The routing information about bandwidth, channel capacity, received power and distance to reach its destination could be exploited by the MAC layer in order to give priority to the packets that are closer and appropriate to their destination. In this work I am going to exploit bandwidth information by the MAC layer in order to find out the best route for multimedia data. Normally shortest route is computed in network layer routing, whereas my problem here is to find out adequate "bandwidth" route required by multimedia traffic instead of finding a shortest route. Then, with the help of performance metrics like packet delivery ratio, average end-to-end delay and normalized routing load, it will be shown that cross-layering between MAC and routing layer performs much better than using routing layer and MAC layer separately. I am going to use NS2 for the implementation of the said problem.