MARP: A multi-agent routing protocol for mobile wireless ad hoc networks

Supporting mobility in a multi hop wireless environment like the MANET still remains a point of research, especially in the context of time-constrained applications. The incapacity of ad hoc networks to offer services of the likes of static or infrastructured networks may be attributed to two major reasons. One, unpredictable mobility of hosts cause location-transparent-packet-delivery to be implemented only at the expense of large control overhead. Two, the lack of central control causes connection management and scalability to be major problems in the multi hop environment. In this paper we propose an efficient agent based routing mechanism that not only incurs minimal overhead, but also lays the foundation for additional functionalities as network management and real time applications. In other words, we show that the agent framework makes the MANET robust and survivable under stringent system constraints.