Abstract
An ad hoc network consists of wireless nodes without any fixed base stations or a backbone infrastructure. Such networks are characterized by multihop wireless links with frequent host mobility and limited power reserve. Transmissions from multiple nodes interfere with one another, making ad hoc network routing a non-trivial problem. On-demand routing proves to be more successful in such networks, as it reduces the traffic overhead of sending periodic updates. In addition to that, multipath routing increases the reliability and end-to-end throughput. In this study, we survey the literature for multipath routing schemes in wireless networks. We propose a novel routing technique that we call Petal Routing, which takes advantage of the broadcast nature of wireless networks to reduce the number of transmissions while increasing the reliability. Our main contribution is to study the effect of using multiple paths to parameterize robustness as a function of the width of the 'petal'. We evaluate the performance of this routing methodology based on various metrics. Finally, we compare it to an existing network coding scheme, which also uses a multipath technique to improve reliability while minimizing traffic overhead.