Proximity Aware Routing in Ad Hoc Networks

Most of the existing routing protocols for ad hoc networks are designed to scale in networks of a few hundred nodes. They rely on state concerning all links of the network or links on the route between a source and a destination. This may result in poor scaling properties in larger mobile networks or when node mobility is high. Using location information to guide the routing process is one of the most often proposed means to achieve scalability in large mobile networks. However, location-based routing is difficult when there are holes in the network topology. We propose a novel position-based routing protocol called Proximity Aware Routing for Ad-hoc networks (PARA) to address these issues. PARA selects the next hop of a packet based on 2-hops neighborhood information. We introduce the concept of "proximity discovery". The knowledge of a node’s 2-hops neighborhood enables the protocol to anticipate concave nodes and helps reduce the risks that the routing protocol will reach a concave node in the network. Our simulation results show that PARA’s performance is better in sparse networks with little congestion. Moreover, PARA significantly outperforms GPSR for delivery ratio, transmission delay and path length. Our results also indicate that PARA delivers more packets than AODV under the same conditions.