An implementational study of certain heuristics for the performance enhancements of AODV

We propose and investigate a number of heuristics for enhancements of the performance of the ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks. These include: (i) the utilization of location information to localize flooding during a route discovery; (ii) the utilization route caches at intermediate nodes for route discovery; (iii) a scheme for maintaining alternative paths to destination; and (iv) an aggressive local repair scheme for re-establishing a broken route. All the heuristics were implemented along with the latest version of the AODV protocol proposal, and simulated using the ns-2 simulator. For the purpose of analyzing the performance three different metrics, namely, packet delivery fraction, average delay and routing load, have been employed. Furthermore, in order to get a realistic insight into the effects of the proposed heuristics, the performance metrics have been evaluated in the presence of both low and high packet rate traffic and over three different mobility, ranges, namely, high, moderate, and low.