A Survey on DHT-Based Routing for Large-Scale Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are infrastructureless and distributed communication systems that require sophisticated approaches to routing to cope with node mobility and heterogeneous application requirements. In the past few years, distributed hash table (DHT) has come forth as a useful additional technique to the design and specification of spontaneous and self-organized networks. Researchers have exploited its advantages by implementing it at the network layer and developing scalable routing protocols for MANETs. The implementation of DHT-based routing in a MANET requires different algorithms and specifications compared to routing in the Internet because a MANET has its unique characteristics, such as node mobility, spontaneous networking, decentralized architecture, limited transmission range, dynamic topology, and frequent network partitioning/merging. In this article, we present a comprehensive survey of research related to DHT-based routing that aims at enhancing the scalability of MANETs. We present a vivid taxonomy of DHT-based routing protocols and the guidelines to design such protocols for MANETs. We compare the features, strengths, and weaknesses of existing DHT-based routing protocols and highlight key research challenges that are vital to address. The outcome of the analysis serves as a guide for anyone willing to delve into research on DHT-based routing in MANETs.

Merging of DHT‐based logical networks in MANETs

“…The existing DHT-based routing protocols for MANETs [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] suffer from two major correlated issues, namely, the mismatch problem and the resilience of the LS structure. The mismatch problem occurs when a node's physical neighbours are not its logical neighbours, resulting in longer routes, high path-stretch ratio and increased traffic overhead [17]. Some existing protocols [4,6,7,21] try to address the mismatch problem by maintaining information about a node's physical neighbours in addition to its logical neighbours.…”

“…Some existing protocols [4,6,7,21] try to address the mismatch problem by maintaining information about a node's physical neighbours in addition to its logical neighbours. Unfortunately, this approach also results in long routes and high path-stretch values [17].…”

“…Later, researchers have exploited the advantages of DHT by implementing it at the network layer for developing scalable routing protocols for MANETs [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. We named such protocols as DHT-based routing for MANETs [17]. In a DHT-based routing for MANETs, each node obtains a logical identifier (LID) in addition to the universal identifier (UID), that is, IP/media access control (MAC) address.…”

DCRP: a scalable path selection and forwarding scheme for IEEE 802.11s wireless mesh networks

“…DHT is another building block for the DCRP scheme, thereby a solid background on the related concepts are recommended to fully understand the rest of this article. Thus, an interesting survey on scalable DHT-based routing protocols for ad hoc networks and P2P overlay network schemes can be found in [33] and [34].…”

Structured Peer-to-Peer overlay deployment on MANET: A survey

“…Others have a different focus with respect to network protocols used, e.g. focusing on DHT-based routing for MANET [2], concentrating on wireless sensor networks [3] or key management and file sharing [4] [5]. Surveys that are closer in scope to the one presented in this paper have been published more than 5 years ago [6] [7].…”