A New QoS-Aware and Stable Opportunistic Routing Protocol for Mobile Wireless Networks

Due to the specific nature and various limitations in the architecture and resources of mobile wireless networks, AD HOC networks are highly challenging and risky in terms of quality spheres and maintaining such systems. Opportunistic routing provides the opportunity to improve these issues and enhance the network performance appropriately. Meanwhile, due to unspecified exchange routes in this strategy, it is more difficult to support the quality of routing. In this type of routing, decision-making and candidate prioritization are done based on a criterion named “opportunism” in such a way that this method of prioritization and selection leads to increased instability in intermediate routes. Accordingly, in order to improve this issue, this research introduces a new routing protocol, named “QoS-Aware and Stable Opportunistic Routing Protocol (QSORP)”. The QSORP is a three-stage protocol that is based on the performance of its stages, tries to provide quality together with stability in opportunistic routing depending on the necessities and requirements of this type of routing. The QSORP protocol supports the capability of reducing the complexity of candidate management in addition to effectively supporting the quality and stability of links. In order to evaluate the QSORP’s performance and efficiency, this protocol is simulated using the OPNET simulator and then the protocol is compared with two other protocols; ORAC and QEOR. The simulation results indicated the superiority of the proposed protocol based on the following criteria: unstable intermediate routes, rate of received data, and network throughput