PDAF: Performance-Driven Adaptive Forwarding in SDN-Assisted NDN-MANETs

Abstract

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) stand out for supporting connectivity in fluid, infrastructure-free scenarios, though they grapple with issues like broadcast storms, inefficient data retrieval, signal overload, and resource constraints due to frequent topology changes. Named Data Networking (NDN) offers content-centric benefits such as in-network caching but suffers from redundant transmissions and mobility-induced disruptions in MANETs. This paper presents PDAF, an SDN-assisted performance-driven adaptive forwarding framework that improves data delivery while suppressing redundant transmissions in NDN-MANETs. PDAF leverages SDN controller to rank candidate routes using multiple performance metrics, incorporating both data caches and source nodes to guide packets along optimal paths in highly dynamic scenarios. An adaptive identifier-driven suppression scheme cancels pending requests network-wide after successful delivery, halting further packet dissemination. Extensive simulations under varying mobility, traffic load, catalogue size, and network density show that PDAF outperforms existing forwarding schemes, achieving, on average, a 25–86% improvement in packet delivery ratio, a 63–96% reduction in end-to-end latency, and a 48–79% reduction in traffic load, while maintaining low control overhead, demonstrating its effectiveness in reliable and efficient content delivery.