Adaptive hybrid geo-casting routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract

One of the major issues in current routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) is to develop a routing protocol that can satisfy different applications’ needs and optimize routing paths to cope with protocol topology changes. Thus, developing a new routing protocol to optimize routing paths based on dynamic topology changes is a challenging task in MANET. Position-based routing protocols are more suitable for high node mobility due to their dependability on local position information rather a global network knowledge. However, most existing position-based routing protocols forward packets greedily which leads to inaccurate location information and results in frequent route failures. Furthermore, incorporating fixed-interval beaconing to distribute local positions introduces high overheads. In this paper an on-demand geo-casting routing scheme which makes use of geographical information to establish cost-effective and reliable paths for packets to reach their destination is proposed. Through the proposed scheme, search area during route discovery process includes only promising search paths, which will alleviate the effect of control message overhead. Moreover, each node is able to independently adjust protocol parameters based on network environment, data traffic conditions, and node’s congestion level. The simulation results show that the proposed protocol outperforms existing routing protocols under different network conditions such as various mobility and traffic loads.