A new routing protocol for village radio network

We present an innovative source-initiated on-demand routing for mobile ad hoc networking. This protocol does not introduce any new messages, e.g. RREQ in route discovery; routers can infer routes from broadcast messages. The protocol operates in an energy-efficient manner by minimizing flooding of messages after nodes have learned routes from messages, and eventually stop broadcasting after the route has been established. To support the new routing protocol, we have a new TDMA-based MAC protocol. Our simulation results show that this new MAC protocol performs better in the village radio network than the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol does. Our simulation results also show that this new routing scheme is quite suitable for the original flooding-based village radio network, which no existing ad hoc routing protocol can be used. This routing scheme is also effective as it provides fairly high packet delivery at both high and low mobility settings. Furthermore, this routing scheme is energy-efficient as it eliminates packet flooding.