Route Discovery in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks: From Unilaterality to Bilaterality

Traditionally, route discovery in MANETs operates in a source-initiated manner. This unilateral operation is unbalanced and inherently not ideal for MANETs. We propose a new scheme called bilateral route discovery (BRD), where both source and destination actively participate in a route discovery process. BRD has the potential to reduce the control overhead by one half. As an underlying protocol for BRD, we propose gratuitous route error reporting (GRER). GRER bypasses the failed link and notifies the destination of a broken route. The destination can thus play an active role in the upcoming route re-discovery. The results of an extensive simulation study confirm the effectiveness of the BRD approach.