Abstract---The Virtual Dynamic Backbone (VDB) is proposed in the infrastructure-less Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) to seek for similar capabilities of the high speed and broadband backbone in the Internet. In this paper, we propose a logical mesh-based VDB model, which is a highly stable hierarchy of mobile nodes with multi-level radios for wireless transmissions. Based on the proposed model, a logical-location-based routing algorithm combining topology-based routing and location-based routing is proposed. The proposed algorithm uses a novel hole-shadowing-based forwarding strategy in order to avoid holes in the network. The comparative analysis shows that the proposed algorithm outperforms the well-known routing algorithm called GPSR in terms of tolerating the location inaccuracy and communication complexity, with a little larger cost of control complexity. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves short routing delay, which is a prerequisite to achieve the scalability.Index Terms---Mobile ad hoc networks, routing, logical location, virtual dynamic backbone
I. INTRODUCTIONMobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) is a very hot research topic in recent years due to their self-organizing, rapidly deployable, dynamically reconfigurable properties. There are two kinds of structures in MANETs: flat and hierarchical. The hierarchical structure scales very well. It can be further categorized into single-level radio hierarchy and multi-level radios hierarchy. In the former, all the Mobile Nodes (MNs) use the same radio; while in the latter, MNs in different tiers use different radios, higher-tier MNs have multi-level radios with different transmission ranges, and these radios operate in different frequency spectra.Routing protocols in MANETs can be categorized into two classes: topology-based and location-based. The former uses the network topology information to compute and maintain routes, while the latter uses geographic location information to help decide the next-hop routing. In location-based routing, people usually assume that a link exists as long as a node resides in the transmission range of another node.The Virtual Dynamic Backbone (VDB) [6] is a sub-graph of the entire network topology, which is proposed in MANETs to seek for similar capabilities of the high speed and broadband backbone in the Internet in supporting efficient data transportation. The utilization of the VDB exploits a hierarchical structure and makes it easy to extend to large-scale MANETs.This paper proposes a two-tier logical Mesh-based VDB (MVDB) model, where the Cluster Heads (CHs) have two-level radios, namely, the radio with short transmission range (i.e., short radio) for communication among cluster members, and the radio with long transmission range (i.e., long radio) for communication between adjacent CHs. Based on the MVDB model, a scalable logical-location-based routing algorithm is proposed, which is a hybrid of topology-based routing and location-based routing. The proposed algorithm uses the logical location to ident...