DIRECTIONAL ANTENNA BASED EFFICIENT LOCATION AWARE ROUTING IN MOBILE ADHOC NETWORK

Mobile Adhoc Network (MANET) also called as wireless ad hoc network is a self-organizing, self-configuring infrastructure less network containing a group of mobile nodes communicating wirelessly. As the hosts move often resulting in dynamic topology of the network, routing seeks more attention. Therefore, routing protocol using node’s location information like LAR (location aided routing) has emerged as potential solution. Here, the route discovery is limited to a small region named as request zone in contrast to blind flooding over the entire network. Also it is noticeable that the shape and size of the request zone play a vital role in enhancing the protocol’s performance. After various analyses it was concluded that for higher node density, elliptical shaped request zone performs better than other possible shapes. Further, suitable route must be chosen based on current load status of the network so that successful delivery of packets is ensured. Generally, omni-directional antennas are used for communication between moving motes. The disadvantage of mobile ad hoc networks with omni-directional antenna lies in the limited capacity caused by high interference and low spatial reuse. This paper focuses on obtaining optimal size for request zone in accordance with varying node density. Further, optimal path between source and destination is selected using Dijkstra’s algorithm. Our simulation results show that directional antennas outshines the performance of omni-directional antennas in increasing transmission range of nodes, reducing the number of redundant nodes involving in data communication etc.