Biased random walk based routing for mobile ad hoc networks

In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), where the mobility of nodes dynamically changes the network topology, broadcasting plays a major role in disseminating control data packets and route discovery process. However, straightforward broadcasting is highly resource demanding and less controllable process. Random walk based searching on the other hand are controllable and consumes less network resource at the expense of delay in service discovery. In this paper a variant of random walk called distributed biased random walk searching is proposed as a route discovery mechanism for MANETs. In this scheme, the broadcast nature of the wireless medium has been exploited to allow mobile nodes to make next node selection decision in a distributed manner when sending their query packet or random walker. Moreover, the random walker is made to bias in the direction of the network where there are more nodes so as to decrease coverage time. To study the performance of the proposed scheme, extensive simulations are conducted using OPNET modeler. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms traditional broadcasting schemes in terms of network resource consumption.