SARP: A dynamically readjustable period size proactive routing protocol for MANETs

The aim of a routing protocol is to compute routes between every couple of nodes. When the topology evolves over time, routing decisions should be constantly reconsidered to ensure continuous valid routing. Conventional proactive routing protocols periodically re-compute their routing-tables. However, due to their inherent nature based on shortest-paths, they select longer links (victims of rapid breakages as nodes move). Increasing the updates' frequency certainly allows a better tracking of the topology changes; however, it induces higher signaling overhead. An adequate trade-off between the period size and the control overhead should be found. In this paper, we propose a new mechanism that keeps sensing the mobility-level to properly-adjust the routing period size. It relies on a distributed algorithm collecting the network cartography to self-regulate the routing period size. Simulation results show that our proposal (SARP) correctly tracks topology changes and properly adjusts the current period size leading to better performances.