Local Flooding-Based on-Demand Routing Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

This paper proposes a local flooding-based on-demand routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks to reduce the flooding overhead and offers effective alternative paths between the source and destination nodes. The proposed protocol first uses overhearing to identify the one-hop neighbors along the shortest path between the source and destination. Then, it performs periodic local flooding initiated by the destination node, which offers the latest route information along the routing path. This technique only involves one-hop neighbors along the shortest path, with the result that the flooding overhead is significantly reduced and seamless rerouting is possible when the current routing path is either disconnected or outdated. Intensive simulations show that the proposed routing protocol improves the routing performance in terms of data delivery ratio, end-to-end delay, and jitter, and it significantly reduces the control overhead in a wide range of node mobility and density, compared to conventional routing protocols.