Improving AODV Performance Using Dynamic Density Driven Route Request Forwarding

Ad-hoc routing protocols use a number of algorithms for route discovery. Some use flooding in which a route request packet (RREQ) is broadcasted from a source node to other nodes in the network. This often leads to unnecessary retransmissions, causing congestion and packet collisions in the network, a phenomenon called a broadcast storm. This paper presents a RREQ message forwarding scheme for AODV that reduces routing overheads. This has been called AODVEXT. Its performance is compared to that of AODV, DSDV, DSR and OLSR protocols. Simulation results show that AODVEXT achieves 3% energy efficiency, 19. 5% improvement in data throughput and 69. 5% reduction in the number of dropped packets for a network of 50 nodes. Greater efficiency is achieved in high density network and marginal improvement in networks with a small number of nodes.