J. Parallel Distrib. Comput. 63 (2003) 107–109

Editorial

Routing in mobile and wireless ad hoc networks$

Ad hoc wireless networks are composed of mobilestations communicating through wireless links, withoutany fixed backbone support. Mobile users can thuscommunicate and exchange information in areas that donot have a pre-existing network infrastructure, or whenthe use of such infrastructure requires wireless exten-sion. Such networks would prove to be very useful incivilian and non-civilian environments. Limited power–energy supply, and frequent topology changes caused bynode mobility make routing in ad hoc wireless networksa challenging problem. Furthermore, due to limitedresources of mobiles, congestion due to the store-and-forward mechanism should be minimized [3,4,15].

Applications of ad hoc wireless networks includemilitary operations (communication in a hostile envir-onment), rescue operations (rapid deployment of acommunication network where infrastructures do notexist or have been damaged), and sporadic happeningscoverage (intense utilization of a communication net-work for a very limited time) [12,13].

In ad hoc wireless networks, a message sent by amobile may be received simultaneously by all the nodesin its vicinity, i.e., by all of its neighbors. Messagesdirected to mobiles not within the sender’s transmissionrange must be forwarded by neighbors, which thus actas routers. Due to users mobility, it is not possible toestablish fixed paths for message delivery through thenetwork. Therefore, a number of routing protocols havebeen proposed for ad hoc wireless networks [1–3,5,6,9–12,14,15], derived from distance-vector [7] or link-state

[8] routing algorithms. Such protocols are classified asproactive or reactive, depending on whether they keeproutes continuously updated, or whether they react ondemand.

This special issue of the Journal of Parallel and

Distributed Computing (JPDC) contains a collection ofhigh-quality papers on various aspects of routing inmobile and wireless ad hoc networks.

In response to the Call For Papers for this specialissue, we have received 78 high-quality submissions fromall over the world, leading to a truly internationalcompetition. The large number of submissions confirms

the growing importance of mobile ad hoc networks(MANETs).

The selection process has also been highly competi-tive. Each paper went through a rigorous peer review bythree to four referees. Based on the referee reports, theGuest Editor ranked the manuscripts for their originalcontribution and also carefully considered the suitabilityof the topics for the special issue. Thus, only 40submissions were selected, which went through anotherround of revisions. In the second round, only ninemanuscripts were recommended for publication in thisissue.

This collection of nine papers is indeed an excellentrepresentation of the state-of-the art research inMANETS.

The first five papers propose new routing protocolsusing both simulation and analytical models to evaluatethe performance of their schemes. The next two papersfocus upon geographic addressing and routing protocolsfor mobile and wireless networks. The last two papersdeal with two very important issues: how to make therouting protocols more secure and energy aware in amobile ad hoc environment.

The first paper by K. Xu and M. Gerla, ‘‘LandmarkRouting in Ad Hoc Networks with Mobile Backbones’’,presents a hierarchical network architecture usingdifferent types of radio capabilities at different layers.An analytical model is developed to derive the optimalnumber of backbones nodes as a function of systemparameters, then a clustered routing scheme is employedto deploy the backbones and thereby reduce the hopdistance to reach remote destinations.

The paper by T. Goff et al., ‘‘Preemptive Routing inAd Hoc Networks’’, proposes to add pro-active routeselection and maintenance to on-demand ad hoc routingprotocols such as DSR and AODV. The proposedmechanism preemptively finds paths and seamlesslyswitches to alternative good paths before a path breaksdown, thereby reducing both the latency and jitter aswell as node congestion. Their results indicate asignificant improvement of DSR and AODV routingprotocols, as well as TCP performance in an ad hocenvironment.

The paper by S.K. Das et al., ‘‘An Adaptive Frame-work for QoS Routing through Multiple Paths in

$This work was supported by the Texas ARP/ATP Research Grant

003594-0092-2001.

0743-7315/03/$ - see front matter r 2003 Published by Elsevier Science (USA).

doi:10.1016/S0743-7315(02)00057-6

Ad hoc Wireless Networks’’, introduces a notion oftemporal and spatial multi-path routing in ad hocwireless networks and describes an adaptive frameworkto evaluate the suitability of using spatial multiple pathswith an objective to minimize end-to-end delay.Simulation experiments demonstrate that their frame-work helps in reducing the end-to-end delay.

The paper by Q. Xue and A. Ganz, ‘‘Ad HocOn-Demand Routing (AQOR) in Mobile Ad HocNetworks’’, introduces a routing protocol that providesend-to-end QoS support for multimedia applications.The results obtained indicate that the proposed schemescales well, and provides high reliability and lowoverhead.

The paper by J. Habetha and J. Wiegert, ‘‘Analyticaland Simulation based Performance Evaluation ofClustered-Based Multihop Ad Hoc Networks’’, evalu-ates the capacity of certain classes of cluster-based adhoc networks. The authors derive an analytical formulafor the average end-to-end delay and throughput in acluster-based multihop ad hoc network. This function isbasically used to adjust the size of the cluster at run-timein order to better control the average throughput anddelay in the network. Simulation experiments are alsopresented to evaluate the performance of their proposedscheme.

The paper by B. An and S. Papavassiliou, ‘‘Geomul-ticast: Architectures and Protocols for Mobile Ad-HocWireless Networks’’, proposes architectures and proto-cols to support geomulticast services with high packetdelivery reliability in MANETs. Using the clusteringapproach as a basis, the authors investigate severalgeomulticast membership management strategies basedupon geolocation storage position and the direction-guided routing paradigm. They have implemented theseschemes using the proposed architecture and evaluatedtheir performance.

The paper by T. Camp and Y. Liu, ‘‘An AdaptiveMesh-Based Protocol For Geocast Routing’’, presents anovel geocast adaptive mesh environment for routing.The authors report a set of experiments in order todemonstrate how geocasting can be helpful in an ad hocenvironment.

The paper by L.L. Venkatraman and D. Agrawal,‘‘Strategies for Enhancing Routing Security in Protocolsfor Mobile Ad hoc Networks’’, investigates severalschemes to secure ad hoc routing protocols. Theprovision of security in wireless and mobile environmentis a very challenging problem. This paper represents oneof the first papers that deal with the security problem inMANET where intermediate nodes are vulnerable.

The paper by A. Avudainayagam and Y. Fang,‘‘DEAR: A Device and Energy Aware Routing Protocolfor Ad-hoc Networks’’, proposes adding a deviceawareness in routing protocols. The results obtainedshow that both energy and device awareness can

significantly improve the performance of conventionalad hoc routing protocols.

Special thanks are due to all authors for theirsubmissions and the reviewers for their hard work andtimely report, which made this issue truly special. Lastbut certainly not the least, our thanks to the Editor,Prof. S. Sahni, for his encouragement, support, andguidance throught this project.

References

[1] A. Boukerche, Performance analysis of ad-hoc routing protocols,

20th IEEE International Conference on Performance, Computing

and Communications, 2001, pp. 171–178.

[2] A. Boukerche, S. Rogers, GPS query optimization in mobile and

wireless ad hoc networking, Sixth IEEE Symposium on Compu-

ters and Communications, July 2001, 198–203.

[3] A. Boukerche, et al., Analysis of randomized congestion control

with DSDV routing in ad hoc wireless networks, J. Parallel

Distrib. Comput. 61 (2001) 967–995.

[4] A. Boukerche et. al., Message traffic control capabilities of the R-

DSDV protocol in mobile ad hoc networks, Proceedings of the

ACM Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile

Systems, Roma, Italy, 2001.

[5] Z.J. Haas, M.R. Pearlman, The performance of query control

schemes for the zone routing protocol, Proceedings of ACM

SIGCOMM’98, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, September 1998,

pp. 167–177.

[6] D.B. Johnson, D.A. Maltz, Dynamic source routing in ad hoc

wireless networks, in: T. Imielinski, H.F. Korth (Eds.), Mobile

Computing, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1996,

pp. 153–181 (Chapter 5).

[7] G.S. Malkin, M.E. Steenstrup, Distance-vector routing, in: M.E.

Steenstrup (Ed.), Routing in Communications Networks, Pre-

ntice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1995, pp. 83–98 (Chapter 3).

[8] J. Moy, Link-state routing, in: M.E. Steenstrup (Ed.), Routing

in Communications Networks, Prentice–Hall, Englewood Cliffs,

NJ, 1995, pp. 135–157 (Chapter 5).

[9] S. Murthy, J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, An efficient routing protocol

for wireless networks, Mobile Networks Appl. 1 (1996) 183–197.

[10] C. Perkins, Ad hoc networking, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA,

2001.

[11] C.E. Perkins, Ad hoc on demand distance vector (AODV)

routing, IEFT Internet Draft, available at: http://www.ieft.org/

internet-drafts/draft-ietf-manet-aodv-02.txt

[12] C.E. Perkins, P. Bhagwat, Routing over multi-hop wireless

network of mobile computers, in: T. Imielinski, H.F. Korth

(Eds) Mobile Computing, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dor-

drecht, 1996, pp. 183–205 (Chapter 6).

[13] S. Ramanathan, M.E. Steenstrup, A survey of routing techniques

for mobile communications networks, Mobile Networks Appl. 1

(1996) 98–104.

[14] M. Scott Corson, A. Ephremides, A distributed routing algorithm

for mobile wireless networks, Wireless Networks 1 (1995) 61–81.

[15] A. Boukerche, L. Zhang, A preemptive on-demand distance

vector routing protocol for mobile and wireless ad hoc networks,

36th ACM/IEEE/SCS Annual Simulation Symposium, 2003.

Azzedine Boukerche is an Assistant Professor of Computer Sciences at

the University of North Texas, and the Founding Director of the

Parallel Simulation and Distributed and Mobile Systems Research

Laboratory (PARADISE) at UNT. Prior to this, he was working as a

Editorial / J. Parallel Distrib. Comput. 63 (2003) 107–109108

Senior Scientist at the Simulation Sciences Division, Metron Corpora-

tion located in San Diego. He was employed as a Faculty at the School

of Computer Science (McGill University) and he also taught at the

Polytechnic of Montreal. He spent the 1991–1992 academic year at the

JPL-California Institute of Technology where he contributed to a

project centered about the specification and verification of the software

used to control interplanetary spacecraft operated by JPL/NASA

Laboratory.

His current research interests include wireless networks, mobile

computing, distributed systems, distributed computing, distributed

interactive simulation, parallel simulation, and VLSI design. Dr.

Boukerche has published several research papers in these areas. He was

the recipient of the best research paper award at IEEE/ACM

PADS’97, the recipient of the National Award for Telecommunication

Software in 1999 for his work on a distributed security system for

mobile phone operations, and has been nominated for the best paper

award at the IEEE/ACM PADS’99, and ACM MSWiM’2001. He was

the Program co-Chair of the third IEEE International Workshop on

Distributed Simulation and Real Time Applications (DS-RT’99),

and a Program co-Chair of the Second ACM Conference on

Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems

(MSWiM’99), the General co-Chair of the principle Symposium on

Modeling Analysis, and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunica-

tion Systems (MASCOTS), in 1998, a General Chair of the Third

ACM Conference on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless

and Mobile Systems (MSWiM’2000), and a General Chair of Fourth

IEEE International Workshop on Distributed Simulation and Real

Time Application (DS-RT’2000), a Chair and the main organizer of a

special session on wireless and mobile computing at the IEEE

HiPC’2000 and as a Tools-Chair for MASCOTS 2001, a Program

co-Chair for the 35th Annual Simulation Symposium, a Deputy

Program co-Chair for ACM World Wide Web (www 2002), Program

co-Chair for the 10th ACM/IEEE MASCOTS 2003 Symposium.

He served as a Guest Editor for several international journals:

VLSI Design, the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing

(JPDC), ACM Wireless Networks (WINET), and ACM Mobile

Networks and Applications (MONET). Dr. Boukerche serves as a

Program co-Chair for the 5th IEEE Int’l Conference on Mobile and

Wireless Communications Networks (MWCN 2003), a Program

co-Chair for ACM/IFIPS Europar 2003, and Steering Committee

Chair for IEEE DS-RT, and ACM MSWiM conferences.

He has been a member of the Program Committee of several

conferences: ICPP, MASCOTS, BioSP3, ICCI, ICC, MSWiM, PADS,

WoWMoM, Globecom, and VTC conferences. Dr. Boukerche serves

as an Associate Editor of the SCS Transactions Journal, and is a

member of IEEE and ACM.

Mirela Sechi Moretti Annoni Notare is a Faculty member and

Professor at Barddal University, Brazil. She is also the Program

Coordinator of the Bacharelado/Curso em Sistemas de Informacao at

Barddal University. She received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the

Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and a B.Sc. Degree from

Passo Fundo University—all in computer science.

Her main research of interests focuses on mobile computing and

the proposition of security management solutions for wireless and

mobile ad hoc networks. Dra Mirela Notare has published widely in

these areas. She has also received several awards and citations, such as

National Award for Telecommunication Software, INRIA and TV

Globo. She serves as a General co-Chair for the International

Information Technology Symposium (I2TS’2002), and Program co-

Chair for the IEEE Mobility Management and Wireless Access

Workshop (MobiWac’2002). She is also a Guest co-Editor for SBC

Journal, the Journal of Wireless and Mobile Computing, and the

International Journal of Interconnection Networks (JOIN). She has

been a committee member in several scientific conferences, including

ACM MSWiM, IEEE/ACM/SCS ANSS and IEEE/ACM MAS-

COTS. She is the Founder and President of STS Co and a member

of IEEE, SBrT and SBC societies.

Azzedine BoukercheE-mail address: boukerche@cs.unt.edu

Department of Computer Sciences,

University of North Texas,

P.O. Box 311366, Denton, TX 7620313, USA

Mirela Sechi M. Annoni NotareE-mail address: mirela@barddal.br

Barddal University, Brazil

Editorial / J. Parallel Distrib. Comput. 63 (2003) 107–109 109