BLR: beacon-less routing algorithm for mobile ad hoc networks

BLR for static networks, since data packets are delayed at
each node in BLR. The advantage of BLR in terms of endto-end
delay is that the performance is basically independent
of the mobility. Packets are delivered after approximately
30 ms even for high mobility in our simulations. It is
worth noting that the end-to-end delay of BLR is even less
than the Max_Delay set to 40 ms for one hop. Due to the
high node density, the probability is high that there is always
a node with a large progress within the forwarding area
which computes a DFD much shorter than Max_Delay.
6. Conclusion
Conventional position-based routing protocol suffer from
several drawbacks caused by the proactive broadcasting of
beacon-messages, such as outdated neighbor tables and
control packet transmissions which degrade network
performance. The BLR routing protocol described in this
paper avoids any beaconing mechanism, i.e. nodes do not
need knowledge about their neighborhood. Packets are
broadcasted and the next hop is chosen in a completely
distributed way by introducing a Dynamic Propagation
Delay at each receiving node depending on its relative
position in the forwarding area. Some limitations and
fundamental properties of BLR are derived, which demonstrate
that network performance is highly dependent on node
density and transmission range. In high node density
networks or with large transmission ranges, BLR is capable
of operating in greedy mode for a long time. However, since
BLR operates on the actual topology and is completely
stateless, the performance is almost independent of node
mobility. Analytical results are supported by simulations,
which show a superior performance of BLR compared to
GPSR and LAR1.
7. Outlook
In future works, we will extend the current implementation
of the BLR protocol with options and variations
discussed in this paper (backup mode, unicast packets,
different forwarding areas and delay functions, etc.) in order
to investigate and demonstrate different scenarios such as
low node density and high traffic volume. A further
direction of research is the use of directional antennas.
Directional antennas seem to be well suited for BLR since
only a part of the actual transmission range is used to find a
next hop, namely the forwarding area. Currently, 802.11
DCF is the most widely used MAC-protocol for ad hoc
networks. The overhead introduced with the RTS-CTS-
DATA-ACK dialog renders several advantages provided by
BLR useless. Therefore, we plan to investigate MACprotocols
adapted to our routing protocol. Multiple access
schemes (e.g. CDMA) could be exploited to increase the
performance and capacity of the network.
M. Heissenbüttel et al. / Computer Communications 27 (2004) 1076–1086 1085
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Hans U. Schmid for his valuable
comments and review of the paper. The work presented in
this paper was supported (in part) by the National
Competence Center in Research on Mobile Information
and Communication Systems (NCCR-MICS), a center
supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation
under grant number 5005-67322.
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