Mitigating congestion in wireless ad hoc networks by using a potential-based routing algorithm
Wei Qiang Wu, Zhongzhao Zhang, Danyang Qin, Chenguang He · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2009
The congestion problem is one of the most important restrictions of wireless ad hoc networks. It is quite different from that of the traditional networks. In this paper, a routing algorithm based on potential, called RAP, is proposed to mitigate the congestion of wireless ad hoc networks. The RAP algorithm defines two potential fields for each node: vertical potential field and congestion level field. The mixture of these two fields shows the potential of a node for a certain destination. The data packets are routed along the steepest gradient direction to its destination. The RAP algorithm for wireless ad hoc networks can route packets bypass the congestion nodes and congestion zones to alleviate the congestion problem. To evaluate the performance of RAP algorithm, we conducted the simulation on NS2. The simulation results show that our RAP algorithm for wireless ad hoc networks can mitigate the congestion problem without much overhead.