Location aware sector-based routing in wireless ad hoc networks

Wireless ad hoc networks are the dynamic, decentralized networks with lightweight mobile devices deployed randomly within an area. Routing in such networks is affected by the dynamic environment of nodes. Flooding is the basic technique to search a route between peers with the help of control packets. Such technique provides high control overhead but the best possible path as a route. In order to reduce control overhead, different protocols based on position are introduced in literature. In this paper, a novel sector based routing protocol is introduced which is based on the location information of destination. A request zone is usually determined for limited control packet flooding which is evaluated on the basis of previous position of destination. Instead of using previous destination position, expected position of the destination is used for the route request forwarding in the neighborhood. The protocol is implemented for network nodes enabled with directional antenna with 120 degree scope of each sector. Based on the expected position of destination, one of the three sectors is selected for route request transmission in the neighborhood. The proposed location aware sector-based routing (LSR) protocol is simulated over different random networks and performance is evaluated in terms of control overhead for single and maximum route discovery, average route lifetime and hop count with varying number nodes and different mobility speeds. The simulation results show better performance of the proposed routing protocol over the existing reactive protocols like DSR and position-based protocols. The proposed protocol marks a reduction of 52% over DSR and 35% over LAR protocol in control overhead without affecting the route length in the network.