Multi-response metric analysis of Adaptive Fault Tolerant Replication (AFTR) routing protocol for MANET

In general, performances of routing protocols are analyzed through simulation. Tools like statistical design of experiments also provide a variety of significant outcomes. To improve the functioning of routing protocols it is required to evaluate the factors that affect its performance. Such evaluation is carried out with the help of response metrics. Two kinds of evaluation are possible: single-response and multi-response. By varying single factor at a time, the effect on the protocol performance is measured through response metrics individually. It is referred as single-response metric analysis. On contrary, the effects of such variation are quantified through more than one response metrics simultaneously and it is referred as multi-response analysis. The paper presents the multi-response analysis of Adaptive Fault Tolerant Replication (AFTR) routing protocol using five response metrics like packet delivery ratio, delay, throughput, routing overhead and packet drop under the variation of five factors named network size, transmission rates, mobility speed, optimal number of copies and pause time. The findings show network size is the leading factor that optimizes all the metrics of the AFTR protocol simultaneously. The second most important factor is the optimal number of copies which have been evaluated using adaptive fault tolerant replication strategy.