Hybrid Zoning Algorithm to Optimize Overhead in Smart Mobile Communication

Abstract

With the increase of mobile terminals, routing protocols in wireless communications must provide better quality of service to meet bandwidth and reliability requirements. In networks without infrastructure, such as ad hoc and sensor networks, where a device performs as both a terminal and a router to forward data of other nodes, maintaining the network topology consumes considerable resources in terms of energy and bandwidth. These parameters need to be considered when designing routing protocols for wireless networks. To reduce the cost of the protocol overhead, some algorithms act on the forwarders, while others act on the transmission of messages. Finally, the hybrid ones are a combination of both. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm with two zoning strategies to enhance the performance of mobile network. The first strategy helps to select dispersive forwarders in order to reduce the collision in radio channel. The second strategy aims to reduce the transmission of redundant messages. Both strategies are based on the location information of nodes. We implemented our algorithm in the optimized link state routing protocol, the most used protocol in mobile ad hoc networks. We showed by simulations that our solution reduces drastically the cost of the overhead with no hindrance to the network topology.