Optimal control overhead based multi-metric routing for MANET

During the last two decades, there has been a tremendous growth in the use of MANETs, not only due to the development of the technology but also due to their high flexibility. MANETs have challenges and limitations and among the major challenge is the routing process because of high dynamic topology and distributed nature. This is the main reason for quick depletion of network resources. Thus, there is a need to develop a routing protocol to fulfill various application requirements and enhance routing paths according to the topology change. In this paper, two protocols are proposed in order to optimally utilize the constrained network resources and reliably detect high-quality links. They are Hybrid Geo-cast Routing (HGR) protocol and Signal Strength and Congestion Avoidance protocol (SSCA). The optimal and adaptive HGR protocol utilizes geographical location information to limit search area during route discovery process by including only promising search paths to minimize control overhead. Meanwhile, adaptive SSCA uses SSCA mechanism in order to enhance link and node quality detection and reduce packet drop. The experimental results show that the proposed HGR protocol is able to reduce up to 46.67% control overhead. Meanwhile, the proposed adaptive SSCA protocol reduces packet drop to 71.20%.