Enhanced Blocking Expanding Ring Search in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

We introduce BERS*, an enhanced blocking expanding ring search (BERS) protocol for route discovery in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). BERS is an energy efficient alternative that was developed recently based on the expanding ring search (ERS). ERS is widely applied in reactive routing protocols such as DSR and AODV. BERS* is a faster and more energy-time efficient version of BERS. It reduces the route discovery latency of BERS by nearly half while maintaining a similar level of energy saving. Our results show that, among the three protocol schemes (BERS*, BERS and ERS), BERS* incurs the least search latency when the hop number of the route nodes is greater than 3, and has achieved the best performance in terms of energy-time efficiency when the hop number of the route nodes is greater than 7. We have also discovered the conditions that allow collective optimisation of BERS* and ERS.