Method for reducing routing overhead for mobile Ad Hoc network

In this paper, we propose a method to reduce the routing overhead in DSDV (Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector) networks. The proposed method benefits from the nature of DSDV, such as loop-free and shortest routing path, but alleviates the problem of control message flooding when the network topology changes. Given a destination node in a DSDV network, there exists a spanning tree using the destination node as its root and constructed by the paths from all nodes to this destination. Based on this concept, we develop a mechanism for each node in mobile environment to dynamically identify its role (internal node or leaf node) in each spanning tree. When receiving a routing message from a destination node, the node checks its role in a corresponding spanning tree and determines whether the message should be forwarded. The proposed method is especially suitable for mobile Ad Hoc network with high node density, where the scarce bandwidth resource is effectively saved by filtering out the redundant routing messages at leaf nodes.