Approach for Reducing Control Packets in AODV-Based MANETs

Movements of nodes in MANETs result in route changes, thus requiring the transmission of control packets. As MANETs have limited resources, it is important to reduce the number of control packets which consume bandwidth. We propose a AODV-based protocol which uses a backbone network to reduce control packets. The destination location is given by GPS and transmitted to the source by the backbone network. Our routing algorithm limits the route search to zones smaller than those used by the original AODV (Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector) protocol, thus reducing the number of control packets. This routing algorithm represents a significant improvement of our previous work on AODV [1, 2]. To show the efficiency of our protocol, we present simulations using NS-2.