###### Abstract  
Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANETs) is a wireless network topology with mobile network nodes and movable communication routes. In addition, the network nodes in MANETs are free to either join or leave the network. Typically, routing in MANETs is multi-hop because of the limited communication range of nodes. Then, routing protocols have been developed for MANETs. Among them, energy-aware location-aided routing (EALAR) is an efficient reactive MANET routing protocol that has been recently obtained by integrating particle swarm optimization (PSO) with mutation operation into the conventional LAR protocol. However, the mutation operation (nonuniform) used in EALAR has some drawbacks, which make EALAR provide insufficient exploration, exploitation, and diversity of solutions. Therefore, this study aims to propose to apply the Optimized PSO (OPSO) via adopting a mutation operation (uniform) instead of nonuniform. The OPSO is integrated into the LAR protocol to enhance all critical performance metrics, including packet delivery ratio, energy consumption, overhead, and end-to-end delay. mobile ad hoc network; location-aided routing protocol; particle swarm optimization +
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reactive, and hybrid [8]. We present this category in Figure 1. The proactive MANET protocol implements a group of protocols to update the information table in the node periodically. The reactive or on-demand approach updates the node with information upon request [9]. Finally, the hybrid approach is a combination of proactive and reactive protocols [10; 11]. A reactive routing protocol in MANET is LAR [12; 13]. It utilizes the geographical data for locating the area and discovering an efficient route to reach the target, i.e., the request zone. The source node estimates the round area (expected zone), whereas the destination is likely to respond in time. In specific, the requesting node sends the flooding routing requests to all the network nodes, and the ones currently located in a request zone would forward the data. The position and the size of the round zone are selected depending on the prior requesting pattern information. The requesting time corresponds to the destination, average speed, and prior location. The requested zone is a small area that includes the expected zone and the source. Many studies have specified the optimal size of the requested zone to forward subsequent requests when a node presented in the requested zone (instead of the outside nodes) receives a Route Request Packet (RREQ). Table 1 presents a comparison between the different categories of routing protocols in MANETs in the aspect of some important features of the LAR, Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV), and Optimal Link State Routing (OLSR) protocols. The LAR protocol suffers from many issues, such as the overhead, end-to-end delay (E2E delay), and difficulty in handling void zones [19], which occur because of the flooding of RREQs in the LAR protocol [20]. The LAR protocol uses a GPS system to determine the node position information. On the basis of a common solution, GPS solves location issues by using position information. However, GPS-dependent location is unreliable because of vertical orientation and the prevalent vertical motion, restricting the LAR protocol to low speed networks. However, different optimization strategies can improve the efficiency of LAR [21]. Therefore, several studies have focused on the concept of energy with different \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Features** & **LAR** & **AODV** & **OLSR** & **References** \\ \hline Implementation complexity & Low & Low & Low & [14] \\ Number of hops & Custom & Unlimited & Unlimited & [14] \\ GPS & ✓ & ✗ & ✗ & [15] \\ Energy consumption & Low & Low & High & [16] \\ Connectivity range & High & Small & Medium & [17] \\ RREQ & Flooding & Multipoint relays & Routes on demand & [18] \\ Medium Access Protocol & IEEE 802.11 & IEEE 802.11 & IEEE 802.11 & [15] \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}