A New Hybrid Location-based Ad Hoc Routing Protocol

A key design issue in routing for wireless ad hoc networks is scalability. By scalability we mean the ability of the network to support increases in node numbers without significantly degrading network performance. In this work we introduce a new hybrid wireless routing protocol specifically designed to address this issue. Our new protocol combines features of reactive routing with location-based geographic routing, in such a manner so as to efficiently use all the location information available. The protocol is designed to gracefully exit to reactive routing as the location information degrades. Another aspect of our protocol is that it can be spatially dependent - meaning different physical areas of the network can be using quite different routing procedures at the same epoch. That our protocol can dramatically increase scalability can be measured via the routing control overhead which we show, through analysis and simulation, to be significantly reduced relative to current protocols. This is particularly so when a large fraction of nodes possess up-to-date accurate location information. Our new protocol operates even though nodes can be mobile, and it provides an enhanced, yet pragmatic, location-enabled solution that can be deployed in all emerging wireless ad hoc networks.