Int. J. Wireless and Mobile Computing, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2014 159 Copyright © 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. A grid-based MANET routing protocol with simple cell-head election Hussein Al-Maqbali*, Khaled Day, Mohamed Ould-Khaoua, Abderezak Touzene and Nasser Alzeidi Department of Computer Science, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman Email: halmaqbali@gmail.com Email: kday@squ.edu.om Email: mok@squ.edu.om Email: touzene@squ.edu.om Email: alzidi@squ.edu.om *Corresponding author Abstract: One promising direction to enhance the performance of routing protocols in mobile ad-hoc networks is to use Global Positioning System (GPS) location information. Grid-based routing protocol is one type of protocols that use GPS. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a routing protocol called Simple Election Grid-based Routing Protocol (SE-GRP) which is based on the GRID routing protocol. The main difference between SE-GRP and GRID is that the more efficient cell-head election approach is used in SE-GRP as compared to the GRID cell-head election approach. The SE-GRP cell-head election method allows neighbour nodes to select cell- heads with highest node ids implicitly using a special table called Neighbours Table. Simulation results show that SE-GRP outperforms GRID in terms of average end-to-end delay, number of overhead packets and delivery ratio. Keywords: mobile ad-hoc networks; routing; grid-based routing; cell-head election. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Al-Maqbali, H., Day, K., Ould-Khaoua, M., Touzene, A. and Alzeidi, N. (2014) ‘A grid-based MANET routing protocol with simple cell- head election’, Int. J. Wireless and Mobile Computing, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp.159–170. Biographical notes: Hussein Al-Maqbali completed his BSc and MSc in Computer Science at Sultan Qaboos University (Oman) in 2000 and 2008 respectively. He has successfully defended his PhD thesis in Computer Science at Sultan Qaboos University in January 2014. His research interests include computer networking and mobile ad-hoc networks. His recent work is related to the design and evaluation of routing protocols for mobile ad-hoc networks. Khaled Day is Dean of Research at Sultan Qaboos University. He received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from the University of Tunis in 1986. He was awarded in 1986 the ‘President Habib Bourguiba Prize’ for excellent academic performance upon completion of his undergraduate degree. He was then awarded from the Tunisian government a scholarship to pursue graduate studies in the USA starting 1987. He obtained the MSc and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota (USA) in 1989 and 1992 respectively. His areas of research interest include interconnection networks, parallel computing, distributed systems and wireless networks. He has published over 100 research papers in international journals and conferences. He is a senior member of IEEE. Mohamed Ould-Khaoua is currently a Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. Prior to that, he worked at Glasgow University, UK, as a Lecturer and then as a Reader. He was the Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Engineering Research. He has served on the Editorial Board of IEEE Transactions on Parallel & Distributed Systems, International Journal of Parallel, Distributed & Emergent System, International Journal of Computers & Applications, International Journal of High Performance Computing & Networking, International Review on Computers and Software etc. His current research interests are performance modelling and evaluation of wired/wireless networks and parallel/distributed systems. Abderezak Touzene received the BS degree in Computer Science from USTHB Algiers in 1987, MSc degree in Computer Science from Paris-Sud University in 1988 and PhD degree in Computer Science from Institut polytechnique de Grenobe (France) in 1992. He is an Associate