Selecting Optimal Path in Multiple-Path Routing for MANETs Using Fuzzy Cost

Background/ Objectives: Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) consists of a set of nodes, where the nodes tend to change their positions time to time because of their infrastructure less characteristic. In MANETs, the protocol that is considered to be the appropriate for constructing an efficient route is AODV. Broadcast storm is another approach that can be used for establishing a path between the sender and receiver. Due to the concerns related to contention and collision, broadcast is not considered as an efficient mechanism for path selection. Though the aim of broadcasting is to minimize the flooding other issues like bandwidth consumption, collision and contention cannot be controlled. Since MANETs are associated with inadequate bandwidth, the approach of broadcasting is not efficient. Multipath routing approach permits in constructing multiple paths between the communicating nodes (sender and receiver). This approach is complicated due to the problem of node mobility in MANETs. The other paths available are not reliable because of the ad hoc nature of MANETs. The intention is to design a fuzzy controller that assists in reducing the reconstruction of paths using fuzzy cost assigned to each node in the network. Methods: The concept of this paper is to establish an optimal path from sender node to the receiver node from the available multiple paths in MANETs. The path established in this approach uses fuzzy cost. Fuzzy measure is the criteria used for establishing a path. The concept ImRMR used in this paper has been included with few improvements. The basic functionality of ImRMR is that paths are classified based on rank fitness. The proposal is to classify the paths based on its fuzzy cost. This fuzzy cost classifies the paths fitness. Findings: The proposed fuzzy cost approach discussed in this study is compared with On-Demand Multicast Routing Protocol (ODMRP). The result exhibits that the proposed method works better under differing conditions like traffic load, transmission range between nodes and also considers node mobility. The proposed mechanism with inclusion of fuzzy cost shows 5% energy efficiency, reduces the collisions by about 35% and throughput is enhanced by 30%. There has been a considerable decrease in the number of queries by 23%. The simulation results indicate that ODMRP with fuzzy cost is more useful and significant. Hence, consideration of fuzzy cost as a means for selecting an effective route is assumed to be the best. Novelty: This method contributes in reducing the drawbacks of routing approaches whether it is unipath and multi-path approach. The proposed approach changes the value of the attributes for a given route with fuzzy cost. A threshold value will be considered initially and the route having a cost more than the initialized threshold would be advised as the best route. This route would be considered as the efficient route for transmission between the sender and the receiver. Keywords: Uni­path, multiple paths, Fuzzy cost, Fuzzy fitness, Rank fitness