A Zone-based location service for geocasting in mobile ad hoc networks

Position-based routing significantly improves routing performance in ad hoc networking. In these routing protocols, a location service is needed from which a node can learn the current position of other nodes in the network. A sender node then uses this information to improve the efficiency in the transmission of packets. The Zone-based location service (ZLS) provides a mechanism for a node to record location information of every other mobile node within a local neighborhood, which we refer to as a location update zone. The location update zone radius i.e. the distance in hops defines the scope of the location update that nodes' location information is relayed. In this paper we present a position-based routing algorithm, which combines ZLS and restricted directional flooding, for geocasting in an ad hoc network. The goal of geocasting is to deliver packets to a group of nodes that are within a specified geographical region. The simulation results show that the location update zone radius controls the tradeoff between the overhead and accuracy of geocast delivery.