Scalable Routing Protocol for Ad Hoc Networks

In this paper we present a scalable routing protocol for ad hoc networks. The protocol is based on a geographic location management strategy that keeps the overhead of routing packets relatively small. Nodes are assigned home regions and all nodes within a home region know the approximate location of the registered nodes. As nodes travel, they send location update messages to their home regions and this information is used to route data packets. In this paper, we derive theoretical performance results for the protocol and prove that the control packet overhead scales linearly with node speed and as N3/2 with increasing number of nodes. These results indicate that our protocol is well suited to relatively large ad hoc networks where nodes travel at high speed. Finally, we use simulations to validate our analytical model.