Dynamic route maintenance for geographic forwarding in mobile ad hoc networks

Traditional route maintenance requires mobile nodes periodically exchange beacon messages with their neighbors in geographic forwarding algorithms. The interval at which these nodes broadcast their beacon messages is typically fixed. However, determining an appropriate value for this interval is challenging. A longer interval reduces the number of beacons needed, but may result in significant location errors. Conversely, a shorter interval guarantees more accurate location information, but induces heavier control overheads. Additionally, since a fixed value is assigned to the lifetime of each routing entry, the forwarding algorithm cannot adapt well to different mobility environments. Therefore, this paper presents a dynamic route maintenance algorithm (DRM) for beacon-based geographic routing. In the approach, the mobile nodes dynamically adjust their beacon intervals based on their speed of movement. Moreover, the routing information can be well managed using the mobility prediction. The simulation results show that DRM not only significantly decreased the routing overheads in a low mobility scenario but also guaranteed the high quality packet delivery in high mobility environments.