An Optimal Path Management Strategy in Mobile Ad Hoc Network Using Fuzzy and Rough Set Theory

Problem statement: Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of wireless mobile nodes that dynamically forms a network. Most of the existing ad-hoc routing algorithms select the shortest path using various resources. However the selected path may not consider all the network parameters and this would result in link instability in the network. The problems with existing methods are frequent route change with respect to change in topology, congestion as result of traffic and battery limitations since it's an infrastructure less network. Approach: To overcome these problems an optimal path management approach called path vector calculation based on fuzzy and rough set theory were addressed. The ultimate intend of this study is to select the qualified path based on power consumption in the node, number of internodes and traffic load in the network. Simple rules were generated using fuzzy and rough set techniques for calculating path vector and to remove irrelevant attributes (resources) for evaluating the best routing. The set of rules were evaluated with proactive and reactive protocols namely DSDV, AODV and DSR in the NS-2 simulation environment based on metrics such as total energy consumed, throughput, packet delivery ratio and average end-to-end delay. Results: The results have shown that in MANET, decision rules with fuzzy and rough set technique has provided qualified path based best routing. Conclusion: The network life time and performance of reactive and proactive protocols in MANET has improved with fuzzy and rough set based decision rules.