HDA: Heading Direction Angle based Multicast Routing for Mobile Adhoc Networks

Routing protocols typically establish paths over which packets will be sent. Mobility breaks those paths and disrupts the communication executing a load, overhead and increased rate of link failure on routing protocols. Mobility can be exploited to improve the route longevity in the establishment of the route. Also the protocols relying on the source of information (i.e. location information from GPS is unavailable such as in tunnels and undergrounds) will fail to operate correctly if this information is not available. Hence self-content information should be available to perform the task of routing. The heading direction angle (HDA) of the nodes is such alternate self-content information used to perform routing. Based on the heading direction angle of a mobile node, only the selected nodes in the network are utilized in the broadcasting of the messages to find the route to the destination. The ways the nodes are selected exploit the mobility to establish a long-lived route to a destination, which lasts for longer period. Multicast adhoc on demand distance vector routing protocol (MAODV) makes use of HDA to establish a long-lived route to a destination and also to limit the scope of route requests. The results show that this modified MAODV (M-MAODV) reduces the overhead, increases the route longevity and improve its performance when compare to MAODV.