Routing with virtual transmission range in mobile ad hoc networks

Routing is one of the most important and challenging problems in mobile ad hoc networks. A routing scheme can be classified as location-aware or location-unaware depending on whether the nodes in the network know their own locations. Recently, location-aware schemes have received a lot of attention due to the dramatic price drop of GPS receivers. GEDIR, DIR, and MFR are three popular location-aware schemes. These three schemes are greedy; therefore they are simple, incur relatively low overhead, and usually result in optimal or near-optimal paths. However, their delivery ratio may not be acceptable for many applications due to their greedy nature. To improve the delivery ratio, the concept of virtual transmission range (VTR for short) is introduced. Based on VTR, a routing scheme is proposed. Like a greedy scheme, the proposed scheme is simple and easy to implement. With a well-chosen VTR, it can achieve a close-to-optimal delivery ratio. This article also compares the performance of the proposed scheme with related schemes in terms of delivery ratio, path optimality, and routing overhead.