Location and selective-bordercast based enhancement of zone routing protocol

Dynamic environment within a wireless ad hoc network affects the data transmission between the network nodes. Many routing protocols are discussed in literature, and are categorized as proactive, reactive and hybrid. In this paper, the main focus is on the zone routing protocol (ZRP), a hybrid protocol where routing is proactive within zone and is reactive outside the zone. We proposed two improvements for ZRP. At first, instead of normal bordercast, selective bordercast is proposed for route estimation where route request is forwarded only by the peripheral nodes. Since all the peripheral nodes are not efficient in route estimation, we limit the bordercast to some specific peripherals based on connectivity and network density. The storage complexity of routing table is also reduced by limiting the table entries within the zone. Secondly, destination's previous location parameter is used to extend the selective bordercast in ZRP thereby reducing the control overhead. The proposed improvements for ZRP is simulated and investigated in terms of IARP traffic, IERP traffic, total control overhead and storage complexity over original ZRP and other existing protocols, providing prolific results.