Neighbor-based dynamic multi-factors routing algorithm in MANETs

Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) have observed exponential progress due to the diversity, simplicity and low-cost devices in the past decades. The reliable network can be provided whenever there is no access to any infrastructure. Mobility is the most significant attributes of MANETs which lead nodes to move freely without the presence of the centralized control. This intriguing attribute made routing a challenging issue among researchers. Broadcasting is one of the common strategies which is used by many routing protocols just to find a route by sending route request (RREQ) packets through the nodes which are deployed in the network and also it is immensely used in several existing routing protocols. Although it ensures better accessibility, it leads to inappropriate overhead all over the network and degrades the performance remarkably. In our proposed method, by considering the characteristics which are compatible with the MANETs, RREQ packets are broadcasted. RREQ packets are broadcasted based on a probability function which considers congestion, overlap, connectivity, and survivability factors. The node which has more remaining energy and connectivity with less congestion and overlapped area is more probable for broadcasting the RREQ packets in the discovery phase. In comparison with modified route maintenance (MRM) scheme and neighbor-based dynamic connectivity factor routing protocol (DCFP), it has been proved that our proposed method performs better in case of normalized routing overhead and energy consumption.