Optimal Location Aided Routing with Directional Antennas in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

MANETs are infrastructure less networks consisting of mobile nodes which are self-configuring and self-organizing. However, they are subjected to various constraints like unreliability, limited resources, latency, etc. Henceforth, location aided routing protocols have emerged as a potential solution for routing in ad hoc networks. The major advantage of these routing protocols is that they perform route discovery in a small restricted region named as request zone. Thus it is evident that the shape and size of the request zone play a major role in enhancing the protocol’s performance. This paper focuses on obtaining optimal shape for request zone by varying node density. Comparison of different shapes of request zones in term of routing overhead, the end to end delay is made. Further, our simulation results show that directional antennas outperform Omni-directional antennas in reducing the interference, redundant packet collisions, etc.