An ad-hoc mobile network is a collection of mobile nodes that are dynamically and arbitrarily located in such a manner that the interconnections between nodes are capable of changing on a continual basis. In order to facilitate communication within the network, a routing protocol is used to discover routes between nodes. The primary goal of such an ad-hoc network routing protocol is correct and efficient route establishment between a pair of nodes so that messages may be delivered in a timely manner. Route construction should be done with a minimum of overhead and bandwidth consumption. This paper examines routing protocols for ad-hoc networks and evaluates these protocols based on a given set of parameters. The paper provides an overview of eight different protocols by presenting their characteristics and functionality, and then provides a comparison and discussion of their respective merits and drawbacks.

This paper is focused on the problem of hop-by-hop routing in a network where different nodes have different views of the network topology. In particular, each node may be aware of just a subset of the network links, perceiving the rest as if their cost was infinite. We formalize the idea of node's individual view of the network with the concept of visibility sets and introduce a routing approach based on the notion of a feasible path, i.e., such path in the node's visibility set that satisfies certain specified restrictions. It is shown that, in a network with general visibility sets, forwarding the packet along an optimal feasible path is necessaryand sufficient to guarantee its eventual delivery to destination without being dropped or routed to the same node twice. Based on the proposed approach, we derive the precise routing policy and formulate an efficient algorithm to search for a family of one-to-all optimal feasible paths in a network with embedded visibility sets. We then proceed to prove the correctness of the algorithm.

In this paper we consider a large population of mobile stations which are interconnected by a multihop wireless net. The applications of this wireless infrastructure range from ad hoc networking (eg, collaborative, distributed computing) to disaster recovery (fire, flood, earthquake), law enforcement (eg, crowd control), search and rescue and battlefield. Key characteristics of this system are the large number of users, their mobility and the ability to operate without the support of a fixed (wired or wireless) infrastructure. The last feature sets this system apart from existing cellular systems and in fact makes its design much more challenging.