Improved OLSR considering node density and residual energy of nodes in dense networks

Recently, there is a rapid increase of connected wireless devices. This implies that networks become denser, thus an increase in control traffic and a higher consumption of bandwidth that may cause packet loss. A novel proposal to minimize control traffic in ad-hoc networks is presented. As most wireless devices are battery-powered, this proposal considers the residual energy of a node in addition to its node density when choosing its willingness to be a multipoint relay (MPR) node. Thus, battery-powered devices with residual energy below a threshold is excluded from being nominated as MPRs. The evaluation was performed in a simulation environment (Riverbed Modeler). Results show a decrease in control traffic with our proposed method.