Although no centralized scheme exists in mobile ad-hoc networks, it could be a better routing strategy to appoint a particular node as a central node. The appointed node then will hand various other jobs which are not required from other nodes of the network. You can use the central node for any such agreement. Another solution is to track down the node that's acting as a selfish node. Once this node has been identified, all other connections with this particular node could be dropped, followed by the re-establishment of all the routes.

The situation where a node cannot forward data packets because of battery failure can be resolved by choosing a battery supply which can last longer. Another solution might be to agree on a certain power limits where all nodes can be considered as an active. As soon as a node power supply drops below the agreed limit, this connection can be considered as the risky one. All other routes under this condition can be reorganized.

One final suggestion is to include the voluntary services from all the participating nodes. Whenever a node approaches a low battery power limit, it can broadcast an information packet to all the other nodes in the network. This packet must contain information such as next hop neighbors, node ID, or sequence number which can assist other nodes readjust their routing tables and the whole network could be reorganized.

In summary, where routing itself a core challenge in mobile ad-hoc networks, there are still some threats even to the existing traditional routing mechanisms as adopted by mobile ad-hoc network. We have discussed some existing routing issues and have suggested some of the possible solutions.

Although there's more of a focus on a routing mechanisms for mobile ad-hoc network, very little attention has been given to make conventional routing mechanisms effective. The solutions covered in this article could possibly help to improve the performance of basic routing mechanism as in use for routing in mobile ad-hoc networks.

James Booth is Editor-at-Large at ZATZ Publishing. In addition to writing for Computing Unplugged and Connected Photographer, he's the author of Do-It-Yourself Wedding Photography. A self-taught photographer, James also dabbles in digital graphics and has learned to be a PC and handheld specialist through personal trial and error. James can be reached at jbooth@zatz.com.