Cluster based location-aware routing protocol for large scale heterogeneous MANET

Routing algorithms with low overhead, stable link, and the independence of large network are essential for the design and operation of the large scale wireless mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). In this paper, we proposed a novel cluster based location-aware routing protocol for large scale heterogeneous MANET (CBLARHM). There are two important mechanisms used in the CBLARHM to improve the MANET performance. Node clustering is an efficient technique to mitigate the topology changes in MANET. It stabilizes the end-to-end communication paths and improves the networks scalability so that the routing overhead does not become tremendous in large scale MANET. Another key challenge is controlling the total number of nodes involved in a routing establishment process so as to reduce the total routing overhead of the MANET. The mechanism used is to use the geographical location information provided by global positioning systems (GPS) to assist in routing. Instead of searching the route in the entire network blindly, position-based routing protocol uses the location information of mobile nodes to confine the route searching space into a smaller estimated range. Simulation results have shown that CBLARHM outperforms other protocols significantly in route setup time, routing overhead and collision, and simultaneously maintains a low average end-to-end delay, a high success delivery ratio, as well as low route discovery frequency.