Energy-efficient adaptive forwarding scheme for MANETs

Flooding is the simplest way of broadcasting, in which each node in the network retransmits an incoming message once. Simple flooding technique in wireless Ad-hoc networks causes the broadcast storm problem. However, this technique is inefficient in terms of resource consumption such as bandwidth and energy. This paper presents a new hybrid scheme that combines different techniques that collaborate to reduce overhead and conserve energy. We propose an Energy-Efficient Adaptive Forwarding Scheme, that utilizes the information of the 1-hop neighbouring radios. In this scheme nodes do not need a positioning system or distance calculation to determine their location. In addition to the previous works, the proposed protocol divides the network into different groups based on their transmission-power levels. Therefore, the node which receives HELLO message from different groups is considered a Gateway node. This node efficiently participates in forwarding RREQ packets and the unnecessary redundant retransmission is avoided. The performance evaluation of the proposed protocol shows a reduction in the routing overhead and in energy consumption, when compared with the Pure-Flooding AODV and Dynamic-Power AODV using NS2.