A Scalable Adaptation of the OLSR Protocol for Large Clustered Mobile Ad hoc Networks

Intense research activity is focused on solutions for the routing function in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs). The most recent efforts emphasize the scalability in large-scale networks, which arises as one of the major challenges to solve in the near future. This paper presents our solution for scalability of the Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) protocol, the well known proactive routing protocol for ad hoc networks. Based on the Internet experience, which suggests that hierarchy is an interesting solution, our protocol assumes that nodes are grouped into clusters thanks to a clustering algorithm. We offer theoretical and simulation analyses of the control overhead generated by our approach, and we compare it to the Fisheye-OLSR and the C-OLSR protocols. Simulations show that our protocol outperforms these two solutions.