Analysis and simulation of three MANET routing protocols: A research on AODV, DSR & DSDV characteristics and their performance evaluation

Mobile ad-hoc network allows electronic devices to independently configure the communication; even if the device changes its position, the (MANET) can maintain the connectivity among the devices since it has the capability to arrange a temporary network dynamically. The lack of central infrastructure and the freedom of mobile nodes to move randomly will create several problems, like routing and security issues. MANET requires a stable routing algorithm to adapt to the network that changes its topology randomly at any time. Several studies were conducted with different scenarios to suggest the best protocol for routing. However, a clear performance evaluation is still a missing part, because the dissimilarities in the mechanism of the protocol can lead to important performance differences. This article provides a performance assessment of (DSR), (DSDV), and (AODV) protocols. Research results and the evaluation of the network are made based on network size, mobility, and variable network load by using NS2 application for simulation. The results reveal that the (AODV, DSR) are more efficient than DSDV and reasonably more proper for ad-hoc applications and projects

A Cross-Layer Modification to the DSR Routing Protocol in Wireless Mesh Networks

A cross-layer modification to the DSR routing protocol that finds high throughput paths in WMNs has been introduced in this work. The Access Efficiency Factor (AEF) has been introduced in this modification as a local congestion avoidance metric for the DSR routing mechanism as an alternative to the hop count (Hc) metric. In this modification, the selected path is identified by finding a path with the highest minimum AEF (max_min_AEF) value. The basis of this study is to compare the performance of the Hc and max_min_AEF as routing metrics for the DSR protocol in WMNs using the OPNET modeler. Performance comparisons between max_min_AEF, Metric Path (MP), and the well known ETT metrics are also carried out in this work. The results of this modification suggest that employing the max_min_AEF as a routing metric outperforms the Hc, ETT, and MP within the DSR protocol in WMNs in terms of throughput. This is because the max_min_AEF is based upon avoiding directing traffic through congested nodes where significant packet loss is likely to occur. This throughput improvement is associated with an increment in the delay time due to the long paths taken to avoid congested regions. To overcome this drawback, a further modification to the routing discovery mechanism has been made by imposing a hop count limit (HCL) on the discovered paths. Tuning the HCL allows the network manager to tradeoff throughput against delay. The choice of congestion avoidance metric exhibits another shortcoming owing to its dependency on the packet size. It penalises the smaller packets over large ones in terms of path lengths. This has been corrected for by introducing a ModAEF metric that explicitly considers the size of the packet. The ModAEF metric includes a tuning factor that allows the operator determine the level of the weighting that should be applied to the packet size to correct for this dependence