MANET routing with provably low complexity through constant density clustering and route request broadcast

As mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are emerging as important components in critical and large-scale applications, it is crucial to develop MANET routing mechanisms with provably low complexity. In this paper, we give a tutorial overview of the efficient use of elementary node clustering and route request broadcast mechanisms for low-complexity MANET routing. We explain these mechanisms with illustrative examples and discuss their theoretical performance characteristics. We demonstrate that node clustering with constant density and route request broadcasting with a doubling radius technique over the network of cluster leaders can be employed for MANET routing with theoretically proven low complexity. Moreover, we contrast these efficient elementary clustering and route request broadcast mechanisms with clustering and route information accumulation mechanisms in the widely studied AODV and DSR routing protocols and discuss the implications of these various mechanisms for scalable MANET routing.