A strategy to reduce the control packet load of MANETs with bidirectional links using DSR

Dynamic source routing (DSR) is a robust protocol commonly applied to multi‐hop wireless mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). In this paper, an algorithm is proposed for modifying the basic DSR protocol to enhance its performance by reducing the number of redundant route reply packets (RREPs). In the modified DSR (MDSR), for a source destination pair, the destination responds to the first received route request packet (RREQ) with an RREP, and the subsequently received RREQs, bearing the same request ID, are responded to only if the hop count is less than that of all the previously received RREQs. The performance of MDSR has been compared with that of the basic DSR for different network densities and for different mobility of nodes. Simulation results show that MDSR gives fewer control packets, less latency and a higher packet delivery ratio than DSR. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.