The impacts of network size on the performance of routing protocols in mobile ad-hoc networks

In order to facilitate communication among the active stations on a mobile ad-hoc network (MANET), a routing protocol is used to discover routes between stations. It plays an important role for the overall performance of a MANET. There are factors such as mobility, network size, network load, bandwidth, and signal strength affecting the performance of routing protocols. This paper aims to study the impacts of network size variations on the performance of routing protocols in MANETs by simulation experiment. The four well known routing protocols including OLSR, AODV, DSR, and TORA have been utilized under varying network sizes. Experimental results show that in small and low mobility networks, the proactive protocol OLSR outperforms the reactive protocols. The DSR is best suited for small and low mobility networks. The OLSR and AODV, among others, perform best in medium sized networks. The OLSR and TORA are capable of running in large networks. The OLSR performs best in most environments, however, its performance degrades when mobility and traffic load increases.