Performance comparison of two on-demand routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks

AODV and DSR are two of the most important routing protocols for ad hoc networks. In this article, we make a comparison of these routing protocols in context of the services offered by them to the transport layer. We first study the interactions between the Transport and MAC layer and then, based on observations, propose metrics to measure the effectiveness of the two routing protocols. Detailed simulations are then performed to compare the performance of AODV and DSR under varying load, mobility and network size and connectivity. Our work makes clear the need for routing protocols to consider network load as an important factor in addition to path length while computing routes. In addition, we find that a suitable caching mechanism is necessary for scalability of a routing protocol and that its effectiveness increases with increasing connection density and decreasing mobility.