In this research, we introduce middleware routing algorithms components for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs). Unlike the conventional networks, MANET is a decentralized radio wireless network that can be established in situation where no infrastructure exists or where deployment of infrastructure is expensive or inconvenient. This inherent flexibility makes it attractive for applications such as military operations, vehicle to vehicle networks, sensor networks, etc. Hence, MANETs require special type of routing algorithms to operate efficiently in such dynamic environment (i.e., wireless channel, bandwidth constrains, nodes resources, etc …).

In this thesis, we propose an add-on generic solution to on-demand ad-hoc routing protocols to enhance the routing protocols performance with minimum control overhead. Our Solution, namely, Destination Assisted Routing Enhancement (DARE), is based on the new idea of transmitting frequent destination beacon packets. These beacon packets are able to refresh the routing cache tables and announce the destination node existence. This methodology results in dramatically minimizing the initialization (learning/optimization) connection set-time as well as the network overhead. Comparison between the traditional Dynamic Source Routing protocol (DSR) and the DSR with DARE (DSR-DARE) are presented to show the potential of DARE middleware.

Second, we propose middleware protocol components in order to improve the real-time applications at the receivers’ side; we propose an algorithm that gives the receiver dynamic ability to move from one multicast session to another based on the receiver capabilities and the path conditions leading to it. Our Multicast Multi-Stream (MMS) solution is added as an extension to the traditional Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) protocol. Then, we present cooperative video caching technique in MANETs in order to reduce the average access latency as well as enhance the video accessibility. Efficient video caching placement and replacement strategies are developed at some of the distributed intermediate nodes across the network. The simulations results have shown that the system has better video perception (i.e. Quality of Service).