Simulation-Based Performance Comparisons of Routing Protocols for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

An ad hoc network is a collection of wireless mobile hosts forming a temporary network without the aid of any established infrastructure or centralized administration. Because of the limited range of each host’s wireless transmission, to communicate with hosts outside its transmission range, a host needs to enlist the aid of its nearby hosts in forwarding packets to the destination. A routing protocol for ad hoc networks is executed on every host and is therefore subject to the limit of the resources at each mobile host. In this paper, the authors focus on on-demand schemes, studying and comparing the performance of three routing protocols: AODV, CBRP, and DSR. Results indicate that despite its improvement in reducing route request packets, CBRP has a higher overhead than DSR because of its periodic hello messages, while AODV’s end-to-end packet delay is the shortest when compared to DSR and CBRP.