Efficient Route Discovery and Repair in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

Building proper routing protocols for a Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) is a critical challenge because (1) flooding route requests often results in broadcast storm (especially when nodes or connections increase) and (2) re-broadcasting route discovery packets to rebuild or repair a broken path (caused by node mobility) will consume more control packets. To solve such broadcast storm and path damage problems, this paper mixes the ideas of multipoint relaying and 2-hop route repair into a new routing protocol suitable for large-scale MANETs. Simulation results show that the new protocol can effectively repair damaged routes at reduced bandwidth consumption.