Information on the location of mobile nodes in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) has the potential to significantly improve network performance. This thesis uses node location information to develop new techniques for route discovery in on-demand routing protocols such as the Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV), thus making an important contribution to enhancing the experience of using mobile networks. A Candidate Neighbours to Rebroadcast the Route Request (CNRR) approach has been proposed to reduce the deleterious impact, known as the broadcast storm, of RREQ packets flooding in traditional on-demand routing protocols. The main concept behind CNRR is specifying a set of neighbours which will rebroadcast the received RREQ. This is a departure from the traditional approach of all receiving nodes rebroadcasting RREQs and has the effect of reducing the problem of redundancy from which mobile networks suffer. The proposed protocol has been developed in two phases: Closest-CNRR and Furthest-CNRR. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithms have a significant effect as they reduce the routing overhead of the AODV protocol by up to 28% compared to the C-CNRR, and by up to 17.5% compared to the F-CNRR. Notably, the proposed algorithms simultaneously achieve better throughput and less data dropping. The Link Stability and Energy Aware protocol (LSEA) has been developed to reduce the overhead while increasing network lifetimes. The LSEA helps to control the global dissemination of RREQs in the network by eliminating those nodes that have a residual energy level below a specific threshold value from participation in end-to-end routes. The proposed LSEA protocol significantly increases network lifetimes by up to 19% compared with other on-demand routing protocols while still managing to obtain the same packet delivery ratio and network throughput levels. Furthermore, merging the LSEA and CNRR concepts has the great advantage of reducing the dissemination of RREQs in the network without loss of reachability among the nodes. This increases network lifetimes, reduces the overhead and increases the amount of data sent and received. Accordingly, a Position-based Selective Neighbour (PSN) approach has been proposed which combines the advantages of zoning and link stability. The results show that the proposed technique has notable advantages over both the AODV and MAAODV as it improves delivery ratios by 24.6% and 18.8%, respectively.

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are re-emerging as a popular networking facility for wireless device users. A growing number of diversified applications are now accessible via wireless devices. The different applications may have different Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, which may better be satisfied by using different routing methods or metric types. Existing ad hoc network routing solutions do not consider various application-level requirements when making a routing decision. They typically make routing decisions based upon limited information acquired at the network layer. Most of the existing routing protocols make use of a single routing metric. Using a single metric type and/or information, only acquired at the network layer may not be able to accommodate different QoS requirements, imposed by diversified user-level applications or application-level data types.The aim of this thesis is to design an efficient routing function for ad hoc networks while at the same time satisfying users‟ and/or applications‟ QoS and security requirements. To achieve this, the thesis investigates and specifies routing requirements that could best support application-level QoS and security requirements in MANETs. It also investigates and critically analyses the state of the art in MANET routing, and the mechanisms used for protecting the routing functions. To overcome the weaknesses and advance the state of the art in MANET routing, this thesis proposes two major solutions. The first solution is the Secure ETX (SETX) routing protocol. It is a secure routing solution that can provide routing functions efficiently in malicious MANET environment. The SETX protocol provides a security mechanism to counter black hole attacks in MANETs on the ETX metric acquisition process. Simulation studies have been carried out and discussed in the thesis. Simulation results show that the SETX protocol can provide a marked improvement in network performances in the presence of black hole attacks, and it can do so with a negligible level of additional overhead.The second solution is a novel routing decision making called the Flexible Routing Decision (FRD) framework. The FRD framework supports routing decision making by using multiple metric types (i.e. multi-criteria routing decision making) and uses a cross-layer approach to support application-level QoS requirements. This allows users to use different routing metrics types, making the most appropriate routing decision for a given application. To accommodate the diversified application-level QoS requirements, multiple routing metric types have been identified and interpreted in the FRD framework design. The FRD framework has overcome some weaknesses exhibited by existing single metric routing decision making, used in MANETs. The performance of a routing decision making of FRD is also evaluated using NS2 simulation package. Simulation results demonstrate that the FRD framework outperforms the existing routing decision making methods.