Performance Comparison of Wireless Ad Hoc Routing Protocols

An ad hoc network is a collection of wireless mobile nodes dynamically forming a temporary network without the use of any existing network infrastructure or centralized administration. This paper compared the performance of two prominent on-demand reactive routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks: Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) and Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing (AODV), along with the traditional Proactive Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector (DSDV) protocol. A simulation model with Media Access Control (MAC) and physical layer models are used to study interlayer interactions and its performance implications. The on-demand protocols, AODV and DSR perform better than the table-driven DSDV protocol. Although DSR and AODV share similar ondemand behavior, the differences in the protocol mechanics can lead to significant performance differentials. The performance differentials are analyzed using varying network load, mobility and network size.