- 1 - Providing Ad - Hoc Connectivity with Reconfigurable Wireless Networks 1

In this paper, we introduce a novel routing protocol for a special class of ad-hoc networks, termed by us the Reconfigurable Wireless Networks (RWNs). The main features of RWNs are: increased mobility of the network nodes, larger number of nodes, and a large network span. We argue that the current routing protocols do not provide a satisfactory solution for routing in this type of an environment. We propose a scheme, called the Zone Routing Protocol (ZRP), which dynamically adjusts itself to the operational conditions by sizing a single network parameter – the Zone Radius. More specifically, ZRP reduces the cost of frequent updates of the constantly changing network topology by limiting the scope of the updates to the immediate neighborhood of the change. We study the performance of the scheme, evaluating the average number of control messages required to discover a route within the network. Furthermore, we compare the scheme’s performance with reactive flooding search and proactive link-state classes of routing protocols.