Minimizing Routing Broadcast and Packet Loss in Wireless Ad-hoc Networks with a Cluster-Based Self-Organized Algorithm as MAC protocol

Abstract

One of the main issues of routing protocols on wireless ad-hoc networks is the energy consumed by the traffic generated in the route discovery and routing table construction and maintenance. To reduce such of amount messages, we propose to use a backbone structure which would control the network traffic flow in an energy-efficient manner. This paper proposes the implementation of the energy-efficient self-organized algorithm (EESOA) as Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol. Also, we extended the algorithm to address network segmentation by handling inter clusters connectivity. EESOA as MAC provide a backbone structure for wireless ad-hoc networks due to their cluster-based capabilities and robustness to topology changes. The encapsulation of EESOA on MAC provides a cross layer solution, agnostic to the routing protocol and wireless technology. To show the performance of this cross-layer solution, an implementation of a wireless ad-hoc network with AODV and EESOA as MAC protocol in the NS3 simulator is used. This simulation allows evaluating the performance of the AODV routing protocol over EESOA as MAC protocol compared against normal Ad-hoc MAC. Therefore, the use of routing protocol over a self-organized algorithm can obtain better results, in packet loss, network connectivity and node reachability.