An Efficient Opportunistic Routing Based on Prediction for Nautical Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

Nautical wireless ad hoc networks are becoming increasingly popular in oceans due to their easy deployment and self-curing capability. They may alternate frequently between connected mobile ad hoc networks and partitioned opportunistic networks due to mobility in large spaces. Traditional mobile ad hoc network routing is used to find the shortest route for connected networks. However, for opportunistic networks, routing schemes with a broadcast nature mainly exploit the reduction in message duplication and the local relaying technologies described in the literature, which may lead to unnecessary resource waste and low packet delivery ratios. To solve the problem, we propose an efficient opportunistic routing scheme based on prediction for nautical wireless ad hoc networks. The scheme first develops an effective candidate intermediate region to recognize the unavailability of some apparently qualified intermediate nodes, and then takes into account the packet reception ratio between nodes and relay advancement prediction, to improve packet delivery. The proposed scheme achieves performance improvements regarding packet loss ratio and throughput with a tolerable latency increase, compared to other schemes.