Efficient flooding with Passive Clustering (PC) in ad hoc networks

Abstract

An ad hoc network is a fast deployable self-configuring wireless network characterized by node mobility, dynamic topology structure, unreliable media and limited power supply. Nodes in an ad hoc network must cooperate and carry out a distributed routing protocol in order to make multi-hop communications possible. On Demand Routing is one of the most popular routing styles in ad hoc networks. In On Demand Routing, "flooding" is used to find a feasible route from source to destination. The function of flooding is to deliver a packet from one source to every other node in the system. Conventional flooding can be very costly in On Demand networks in terms of network throughput efficiency as well as node energy consumption. The main reason is that the same packet is rebroadcast unnecessarily several times (redundant rebroadcast). Indeed, the penalty of redundant rebroadcast increases when the size of network grows and the density of network increases. In this paper we introduce a novel clustering scheme, call Passive Clustering that can reduce the redundant rebroadcast effect in flooding. We demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed scheme in the AODV (Ad hoc, On demand Distance Vector) routing scheme.