Efficient clustering-based routing protocol in mobile ad-hoc networks

The paper proposes a new routing protocol for mobile ad-hoc networks. It is a kind of hybrid routing protocol (HRP). It lies somewhere between proactive and reactive routing protocols (PRP and RRP). The former requires every node to maintain the full routing information, while the latter typically relies on the flooding of queries to discover a destination. The proposed routing protocol works on the basis of a virtual cluster, consisting of a collection of those nodes that are only one-hop distance away. The idea is to reduce significantly control overheads, such as route query packets, as well as the flooding time for collecting the network topology information at a destination. The key feature of the proposed scheme is that it draws on the short packet transfer delay of PRP and the small control overhead performance of RRP. A backup route is intended to improve the delay performance further. A disconnected route can be replaced by a backup route, if available. Computing the backup route does not increase computational overheads. Computer simulation studies demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed scheme. In particular, it is not sensitive to changing network topology, has shorter transfer delay, reasonable control overheads and appreciable throughput. It exhibits all these desirable characteristics without compromising on other important performance measures.