An Investigation on Route Identification Through the Dynamic Source Routing Protocol in Multi-hop Wireless Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Abstract

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET) is a wireless network that has varying mobility for the collection of nodes. The communication path is identified by routing protocol that has a predefined procedure to determine the efficient path. It is primarily classified into three types based on the method adapted for the protocol activation. They are (1) proactive, (2) reactive, and (3) hybrid. The Dynamic Source Routing protocol (DSR) is a reactive protocol, and this work investigates the advantages and drawbacks of DSR protocol. The reactive nature of DSR is analyzed for multi-hop wireless mobile ad hoc network scenario. The two main aspects of routing protocol are related with the route. Those are discovery through recording cum matching and maintenance. The overhead of maintaining routing table is eliminated since it is a reactive protocol. The loop formation is also eliminated using host matching with route record. The complete route information of intermediate nodes between source node and target nodes is well known in advance. The two route messages, Route Request message (RREQ) along with Route Reply message (RREP) are used in discovery of route and maintenance. Finally, the performance of the DSR protocol is compared with the well-advanced reactive protocol, Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV).