Route Optimization Using Adaptive Shrink Mechanism for MANET

Abstract

In Mobile Ad hoc networks (MANET), routing protocols do not adapt to changing network topology. Unless there is a link failure, the route will not be updated even if another route with lesser hop count becomes available. In this paper, we propose a route optimization technique using adaptive shrinking mechanism. It initially uses the estimated geometrical distance (EGD) metric for route discovery and link quality prediction technique. The adaptive shrinking mechanism involves sending a shrink packet along with the data packets, based on the parameters link quality, traffic rate and link change rate. When the source want to send some data to destination, it verifies the above said parameters and then decides to send the shrink packet. It optimizes the existing routing protocol by reducing the delay and increasing the lifetime of the network. By simulation, it is shown that the proposed mechanism reduces the delay and packet drop while increasing the throughput.