Effects of Packet Size on AODV Routing Protocol Implementation in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous MANET

Networks are being used in various areas and the demand of users nowadays has motivated the emergence of the Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET). MANET is a dynamic network without fixed infrastructure due to their wireless nature and can be deployed as multi-hop packet networks. It is a wireless network and has dynamic topology due to its node mobility. There are two types of MANET, homogeneous and heterogeneous MANET. An architecture has been designed in previous work to model these two types of MANET. Three scenarios have been defined from this architecture: scenario I (communication entirely within MANET, homogeneous MANET), scenario II (communication between MANET and wireless LAN, heterogeneous MANET) and scenario III (communication between MANET with wireless LAN and wired LAN, heterogeneous MANET). MANET has its own routing protocols which can compromised with frequent route exchange, dynamic topology, bandwidth constraint and multi-hop routing. Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) is one of the routing protocols in MANET. The aim of this research is to assess the effects of different packet size with the implementation of AODV routing protocols in homogeneous and heterogeneous MANET through the simulation method. The three scenarios above have been developed in the OMNeT++ network simulator. The results achieved from the test have been evaluated using the metrics assigned, throughput and packet delivery ratio (PDR). The tests show that the increase of throughput and PDR performance was parallel with the increase of packet size. From the test also, we can conclude that the performance due to the packet size effect in homogeneous MANET is better than in heterogeneous MANET.