Using connection expansion to reduce control traffic in MANETs

We consider the problem of control traffic overhead in MANETs with long-lived connections, operating under a reactive routing protocol (e.g. AODV). In such settings, control traffic overhead origins can be traced principally to connection link failures, which trigger expensive global route discoveries. In this paper, we introduce a route maintenance scheme developed with the objective of reducing global route discoveries in such settings. The proposed scheme decrease the expected number of route discovery attempts by taking preemptive action to counteract impending link disconnections due to node movement. The proposed scheme was implemented as an extension of AODV in ns2, and compared with the standard AODV under different network regimes. Through the analysis of data derived from extensive simulations, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme significantly decreases overall control traffic while maintaining comparable packet delivery rates, at the cost of only very minor degradation in path optimality.