ORRP: Optimal Reactive Routing Protocol for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

An ad-hoc network is a self-supporting collection of mobile nodes that happen to exist within a close proximity in an interval of time. In this paper, a reactive routing protocol has been proposed that computes the shortest path in between any source-destination pair on demand. The approach, unlike other reactive protocols, finds a loop-free, optimal path between the end nodes. It does not use broadcasting like DSR or some other reactive protocols. In fact ORRP exchanges only (n-1) control packets, in the best case. A comparative performance evaluation establishes the advantages of ORRP. The paper is a substantial extension of our earlier work reported in [S. Dulta et al., 2006].