Hole-shadowing routing in large-scale MANETs

The Virtual Dynamic Backbone (VDB) is proposed in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) to seek for similar capabilities of the high speed and broadband backbone in the Internet. In this paper, we propose a logical Mesh-based Virtual Dynamic Backbone (MVDB) model which is built on a highly stable hierarchy of Mobile Nodes (MNs) with multi-level radios for wireless transmissions. Based on the model, a novel location-based routing algorithm is designed. The proposed algorithm, called hole-shadowing routing, provides an avoidance-based strategy to deal with the hole-induced local optimum problem in location-based routing. In addition, it uses the logical location to identify a MN in the sense that the location is actually the identity of the Virtual Circle (VC) region where the MN resides. Comparative analysis shows that the proposed algorithm outperforms the well-known location-based routing algorithm called Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR) in terms of the tolerance of the location inaccuracy and the communication complexity, with a little larger cost of control messages. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can efficiently handle holes with small routing delay, small routing overhead and good scalability.