Query Stride technique for on-demand routing protocols in ad hoc networks

A mobile ad hoe network is characterized by dynamically changing topology and multi-hop wireless links. While a variety of routing protocols have been developed for this special environment recently, a class of routing schemes called on-demand protocols have attracted a lot of attentions because of low routing overhead. However, their efficiency is limited by the enormous query flooding. This paper describes a new query control scheme, Query Stride, which reduces this overhead by using the neighbor information. A query can be flooded to the whole network by a minimum number of nodes that participate in flooding. In addition, Query Stride can be applied to any on-demand protocols. Simulation results demonstrate a great reduction of unnecessary query packets. This also reduces network congestion, accordingly results in better packet delivery and end-to-end delay performance.