OLSR and MPR: mutual dependences and performances

Since the initial draft, the Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) protocol has been associated with the Multipoint Relay (MPR) protocol to reduce the flooding of OLSR topological messages. Many papers have been written on solutions to improve OLSR by replacing MPR by another topology control protocol, or by modifying MPR heuristic. But few of them have dealt with the particular interactions between MPR and OLSR. In this chapter, we argue that OLSR optimality is bound to the deep cooperation between MPR and OLSR. We also illustrate how OLSR suffers from convergence problems, and finally suggest that solving these convergence issues will open new paths to improve OLSR.