Performance Evaluation of Routing Strategies in MANETs

Ad hoc networks are gaining increasing popularity in recent years because of their ease of deployment. No wired base station or infrastructure is supported, and each host communicates one another via packet radios. In ad hoc networks, routing protocols are challenged with establishing and maintaining multihop routes in the face of mobility, bandwidth limitation and power constraints. In this paper, the distance vector based Wireless Routing Protocol (WR-P) and Adaptive Distance Vector protocol (ADV), the link state based reactive protocol Fisheye State Routing (FSR), the on-demand routing protocol Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) and Associativity Based Routing protocol (ABR), and the location based reactive protocol Location-Aided Routing protocol (LAR) are simulated using OPNET Modeler (R) and compared under various network scenarios (e.g., different mobility patterns, mobility rates, traffic patterns, etc). Our study shows that overall, all protocols performed much better with the group mobility model than with the random waypoint model. WRP and FSR, especially, are the main beneficiaries of the group mobility model. Each protocol's performance degraded as mobility rates increased. On-demand protocols were highly effective and efficient in most of our scenarios. Extra delay in acquiring routes, though, makes them less attractive in delivering real-time traffic. LAR further improved an on-demand protocol by using location information, but produced more overhead to exchange location information.