A low overhead routing protocol for ad hoc networks

The Ad hoc network is a type of wireless network characterized by its dynamic and flexible nature. At any moment, the network members are able to change their positions which makes the topological information hard to maintain up to date. Also, unlike the standard wireless network, this type of network doesn´t need a preset infrastructure to operate. The essence of the auto-organization feature of the Ad hoc network is the routing protocol. In order to build and maintain the paths between the mobile users, the Ad hoc routing protocol is executed in a distributed fashion. To manage the random topology changes, the routing information is advertised periodically to update the topological view of the network members. As a result, this type of protocol consumes a portion of the network resources. Considering that the Ad hoc network is usually composed of mobile devices equipped with restricted resources, it´s necessary to limit the complexity of the routing protocol. In this paper, we present an algorithm for a proactive protocol, that is able to maintain the connectivity between all the network members without generating a huge volume of overhead. Moreover, we compare the results obtained from the tests of the proposed algorithm with other existing protocols.