Bandwidth-efficient routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have dynamic irregular topologies by nature, and suffer from inherent limitations such as limited bandwidth and power. A number of routing protocols have been proposed in the past few years to deal with these issues efficiently. The paper proposes and evaluates a new routing protocol, referred to here as the vector routing protocol (VRP). One of the main features of the VRP is its lower communication overhead to establish a route from source to destination. Results obtained through simulation experiments reveal that the new VRP algorithm achieves a lower communication overhead than the well known DSDV and AODV protocols, especially in low mobility environments.