Comparative performance evaluation of Mobile Ad Hoc routing protocols

Mobile Ad Hoc network (MANET) is a group of mobile nodes that are dynamically and arbitrarily located in such a manner that the interconnections between nodes are capable of changing on a continual basis. Although numerous routing protocols have been proposed for mobile ad hoc networks, there is no universal scheme that works well in scenarios with different network sizes, traffic loads and node mobility patterns, so mobile ad hoc routing protocol election presents a great challenge. This paper shows comparative performance evaluation of two prominent on-demand reactive routing protocols in mobile ad hoc networks: Ad Hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) and Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), along with the traditional proactive protocol Destination Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV). Comprehensive analysis has been carried out based on the results obtained by running simulations with different load and mobility scenarios in Network Simulator version 2 (NS- 2). Used comparative parameters are Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), Normalized Routing Load (NRL) and average end-toend delay. The general observation of the results indicate that considered protocols react in similar way in low load and low mobility scenarios, but under high mobility DSR outperforms AODV and DSDV protocols, although DSR and AODV share similar on-demand behavior.