An adaptive forwarding cluster routing protocol for large scale wireless Mobile Ad Hoc networks

A novel routing protocol, namely adaptive forwarding cluster routing (AFCR) protocol, is proposed to improve the network scalability in a large scale mobile ad hoc network (MANET). In the AFCR protocol, nodes are divided into several 1-hop clusters. Local routing information is exchanged between neighboring nodes to establish routes between cluster heads in adjacent clusters, which are further used to propagate routing information of nonadjacent clusters. Based on local routing information and cluster architecture, nodes adaptively forward data packets. Simulation results show that compared with the DSDV protocol, the proposed protocol can improve network performance in the present of a large number of mobile nodes and heavy traffic.