A Density and Mobility Aware Energy-Efficient Broadcast Route Discovery Strategy for Mobile Ad hoc Networks

We propose a novel network density and mobility aware energy-efficient broadcast route discovery strategy (called DMEF) to determine stable routes in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). During the on-demand route discovery process, each node dynamically chooses its own broadcast transmission range for the Route-Request message depending on the perceived number of neighbor nodes in its default maximum transmission range and the node’s own mobility values during the time of broadcast. A node surrounded by more neighbors advertises itself only to a limited set of nearby neighbors and a node surrounded by few neighbors advertises itself to a maximum of its neighbors. Similarly, a slow-moving node advertises itself to a majority of its neighbors so that links formed using this node can be more stable. A fast-moving node advertises itself only to the neighbors closer to it. Simulation results indicate that DMEF is very effective, vis-à-vis flooding, in reducing the number of broadcast route discoveries by determining routes with a longer lifetime and as well as in reducing the energy consumed per route discovery. DMEF does not require any changes in the packet headers and can be used with any MANET routing protocol that has been proposed in the literature.