Routing protocols for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) have been extensively studied for more than fifteen years. Position-based routing protocols route packets towards the destination using greedy forwarding (i.e., an intermediate node forwards packets to a neighbor that is closer to the destination than itself). Different position-based protocols use different strategies to pick the neighbor to forward the packet. If a node has no neighbor that is closer to the destination than itself, greedy forwarding fails. In this case, we say there is void (no neighboring nodes) in the direction of the destination. Different position-based routing protocols use different methods for dealing with voids. In this paper, we use a simple backtracking technique to deal with voids and design a position-based routing protocol called "Greedy Routing Protocol with Backtracking (GRB)". We compare the performance of our protocol with the well known Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR) routing and the Ad-Hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol as well as the Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol. Our protocol needs much less routing-control packets than those needed by DSR, AODV, and GPSR. Simulation results also show that our protocol has a higher packet-delivery ratio, lower end-to-end delay, and less hop count on average than AODV.
An ad hoc network is a collection of wireless mobile hosts forming a temporary network without the aid of any established infrastructure or centralized administration. In such an environment, it may be necessary for one mobile host to enlist the aid of other hosts in forwarding a packet to its destination, due to the limited range of each mobile host’s wireless transmissions. This paper presents a protocol for routing in ad hoc networks that uses dynamic source routing. The protocol adapts quickly to routing changes when host movement is frequent, yet requires little or no overhead during periods in which hosts move less frequently. Based on results from a packet-level simulation of mobile hosts operating in an ad hoc network, the protocol performs well over a variety of environmental conditions such as host density and movement rates. For all but the highest rates of host movement simulated, the overhead of the protocol is quite low, falling to just 1 of total data packets transmitted for moderate movement rates in a network of 24 mobile hosts. In all cases, the difference in length between the routes used and the optimal route lengths is negligible, and in most cases, route lengths are on average within a factor of 1.01 of optimal.