Performance Evaluation of OLSR and AODV Routing Protocols over Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is a form of wireless network that does not need a centralized system to communicate with nodes. MANET's nodes are self-organized and designed where each mobile node can be a sender, forwarder or receiver. However, the dynamic topology and mobility of nodes make the routing of data between nodes a challenge. Through the last two decades, the researchers developed many routing protocols that have various characteristics. Because of their popularity among MANET protocols, this paper evaluates OLSR and AODV routing protocols in wide range of scenarios over NS2, this under various number of nodes, various node speed, and various data rate. After the results obtained from the simulation are analyzed, OLSR gives better performance in term of average end to end delay which make it suitable for delay sensitive applications. On the other hand, AODV outperforms in terms of throughput and packet delivery ratio which is suitable for throughput-based applications.