Comparison of AODV and DSDV Routing Protocols for Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) are networks that are created by moving vehicles communicating with each other to share information, helping to enhance traffic safety and support intelligent transportation systems. The main challenge in VANETs is selecting an effective routing protocol that can handle frequent changes in network topology as the vehicles move. This paper examines the performance of AODV and DSDV routing protocols in Vehicular Ad-hoc networks. Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol, which is designed to find routes between nodes only when needed, making it a suitable choice for highly dynamic networks like VANETs. Also, DSDV can be effective in VANETs due to its proactive route maintenance and destination-based sequence numbers ensuring proper sequence. Using SUMO to simulate realistic vehicle movement and OMNeT++ for network simulation, we evaluate AODV and DSDV’s performance in various traffic scenarios. The key performance metrics-packet drop ratio and end-to-end delay are analysed to determine how well these protocols can handle the high mobility of vehicles.