International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR)
Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2012
Performance Evaluations and Comparisons of
Routing Protocols in MANETs
San San Naing, Zaw Min Naing, Hla Myo Tun

Abstract— This paper presents the performances of different
ad hoc routing protocols. Mobile ad hoc networks are multi hop
wireless networks in which mobile nodes can move freely and
can communicate with each other without any centralized
control or base stations. Any mobile device which is within
MANETs can act not only as a source and a sink but also as a
router for data transmission. Routing is one of the vital
functions of network performance. And then the ability of data
transmission also depends on routing between the mobile devices
throughput out the network. Therefore, the performances of
routing protocols in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have
been proposed to test with different network areas such as 800
square meter and 500 square meter. They are simulated with
three performance metrics such as packet delivery fraction,
average end-to-end delay and throughput. In mobile ad hoc
networks, the topology is frequently changes due to the
movement of mobile nodes. Therefore, the selection of mobility
model testing the performance of routing protocols is very
important. Random Waypoint Mobility Model (RWMM) which
is the most commonly used mobility model in ad hoc network is
utilized in this observation. This study is simulated on the
network simulator (NS2) and the comparisons of the
performances of routing protocols are illustrated at different
movement speeds.
Index Terms—Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), routing
protocols, AODV, DSR, Performance Metrics
I. INTRODUCTION
Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are multi hop
wireless networks in which mobile nodes can move freely and
can communicate with each other without any centralized
control or base stations [3]. Each node in MANETs acts as a
source transmitting the data packets, as a destination
receiving the packets transmitted by other source and also
plays an additional role as a router, in routing the data packets
which are destined to some other node. The applications of
these networks are in battle field, disaster recovery and
emergency rescue operations [4].
There are two variations of wireless mobile communications.
The first one is known as infrastructure wireless networks,
where the mobile node communicates with a base station that
is located within its transmission range (one hop away from
Manuscript
San San Naing, Department of Electronic and Communication,
Mandalay
Technologicaal
University
Mandalay,
Myanmar,
+959400413115, (e-mail: [email protected]).
Zaw Min Naing, Technological University (Maubin), Maubin,
Myanmar, +9598585184, (e-mail: [email protected]).
Hla Myo Tun, Department of Electronic and Communication,
Mandalay
Technologicaal
University,
Mandalay,
Myanmar,
+9595416337, (e-mail: [email protected]).
the base station). The second one is infrastructure less
wireless network which is known as Mobile Ad hoc Networks
(MANETs). The sample diagram of infrastructure wireless
networks can be seen in fig. 1.
Fig. 1 Infrastructure vs Ad Hoc Network
MANETs consist of fixed or mobile nodes which are
associated without the help of fixed infrastructure or central
administration. These nodes are self-arranged and can be
organized “on the fly” anyplace, any time to support a
particular reason or situation. Two nodes know how to
communicate if they are within the reach of other’s
transmission range; if not intermediate nodes serve as routers
[2]. Mobile Ad-Hoc networks or MANET networks [1] are
mobile wireless networks, capable of autonomous operation.
Such networks operate without a base station infrastructure.
The nodes cooperate to provide connectivity. Also, a
MANET operates without centralized administration and the
nodes cooperate to provide services [3]. The diagram of
Mobile Ad hoc Network or infrastructure less network is
illustrated in fig. 2.
Fig. 2 Infrastructure less (Ad Hoc) Network
This investigation is mainly focused on the performance of
ad hoc routing protocols within the different coverage areas.
This is also observed at the various mobility speed because
mobile nodes which are in the ad hoc wireless network move
generously. Moreover, network density is also changed at all
mobility speed. This is explored with the network simulator
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All Rights Reserved © 2012 IJSETR
International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR)
Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2012
(NS2) which is a commonly used simulator for mobile ad hoc
networks.
The rest of the paper are: section 2 describes some
characteristics and applications of MANETs and
classification of ad hoc routing protocols. Simulation
environments and parameters are depicted in section 3. The
results of this observation is presented in section 4 and then
the overall performance of this study is concluded in section
5.
II. MANETS AND AD HOC ROUTING PROTOCOLS
Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) are self-configuring
networks of nodes connected via wireless without any form of
centralized administration. This kind of networks is currently
one of the most important research subjects, due to the huge
variety of applications (emergency, military, etc...) [4]. In
MANETs, each node acts both as a host and as a router, thus,
it must be capable of forwarding packets to other nodes.
Topologies of these networks change frequently. To solve this
problem, special routing protocols for MANETs are needed
because traditional routing protocols for wired networks
cannot work efficiently in MANETs.
A. MANETs
Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are autonomous
systems of mobile hosts connected by wireless links. In
MANETs, each node acts both as host and as router, thus, it
must be capable of forwarding packets to other nodes.
Topologies of these networks change frequently. To solve this
problem, special routing protocols for MANETs are needed
because traditional routing protocols for wired networks
cannot work efficiently in MANETs. Hence, a specific
dynamic routing protocol for MANETs which discovers and
maintains the routes, and deletes the obsolete routes
continuously is necessary.
This kind of networks is becoming more and more
important because of the large number of applications, such as
[4]:
• Personal networks: Laptops, PDA’s (Personal Digital
Assistants), communication equipments, etc.
• Military applications: tanks, planes, soldiers, etc.
• Civil applications: Transport service networks, sport
arenas, boats, meeting centers, etc.
• Emergency operations: searching and rescue equipment,
police and firemen, etc.
B. Routing in MANETS
In MANETs, each node acts both as host and as router,
thus, it must be capable of forwarding packets to other nodes.
Topologies of these networks change frequently. To work out
this problem, special routing protocols for MANETs are
needed because traditional routing protocols for wired
networks cannot work efficiently in MANETs [6]. Hence, a
specific dynamic routing protocol for MANETs which
discovers and maintains the routes, and deletes the superseded
routes continuously is necessary.
MANETs are necessary to have different routing protocols
from the wired networks because traditional routing protocol
for wired network cannot work efficiently in MANET. Three
types of routing protocols are commonly used in MANETs.
They are Table-driven (Proactive), Demand-driven
(Reactive) and Hybrids [5].
i. AODV Routing Protocol
Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing is an
on-demand and distance-vector routing protocol. AODV
routing protocol is capable of both unicast and multicast
routing. It keeps the routes in the routing table as long as they
are needed by the source nodes [8]. To find a path to the
destination, the source broadcasts a route request (RREQ)
packet. The neighbours in turn broadcast the packet to their
neighbours till it reaches an intermediate node that has recent
route information about the destination or till it reaches the
destination. The route request packet (RREQ) uses sequence
numbers to ensure that the routes are loop free and to make
sure that if the intermediate nodes reply to route requests, they
reply with the latest information only. When a node forwards
a route request packet to its neighbours, it also records in its
tables the node from which the first copy of the request came.
This information is used to construct the reverse path for the
route reply (RREP) packet. If the source moves then it can
reinitiate route discovery to the destination. The diagram of
propagation of route request (RREQ) packet and path taken
by route reply (RREP) packet for AODV is shown in Fig. 3.
Fig. 3 AODV routing protocol with RREQ and RREP
message [12]
ii. DSR Routing Protocol
Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) is similar to AODV as it
establishes a route on-demand. It uses source routing instead
of relying on the routing table at each intermediate node.
Every node contains a route cache. The key distinguishing
feature of DSR is the use of source routing. That is, the sender
knows the complete hop-by-hop route to the destination.
These routes are stored in a route cache. The data packets
carry the source route in the packet header. Each entry in route
cache specifies the intermediate nodes to a destination. The
route cache is used to respond to RREQs even if it is not the
destination. The route cache is always updated when it learns
a new route [7].
The two major phases of the protocol are: route discovery
and route maintenance [10]. When the source node wants to
send a packet to a destination, it looks up its route cache to
determine if it already contains a route to the destination. If it
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All Rights Reserved © 2012 IJSETR
International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR)
Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2012
finds that an unexpired route to the destination exists, then it
uses this route to send the packet. But if the node does not
have such a route, then it initiates the route discovery process
by broadcasting a route request packet (RREQ). A route reply
(RREP) is generated when either the destination or an
intermediate node with current information about the
destination receives The process of route request (RREQ) and
route reply message (RREP) is shown in the route request
packet [9]. To send the route reply packet, the responding
node must have a route to the source. If it has a route to the
source in its route cache, it can use that route. The diagram of
building record route during route discovery and propagation
of route reply (RREP) packet with the route record for DSR is
displayed in Fig. 4.
<1,2>
<1,3,5>
2
<1>
Source
7
<1,3,5,7>
5
8
<1>
1
3
Destination
<1,3>
6
<1>
<1,4,6>
4
<1,4>
(a) Building Record Route during Route Discovery
7
2
5
8
Source
1
3
6
<1>
Destination
<1,4,6>
4
<1,4>
(b) Propagation of Route Reply (RREP) Packet with the Route Record
Fig. 4 Creation of the route record in DSR [10]
III. SIMULATION ENVIRONMENT AND PERFORMANCE
PARAMETERS
The performances of routing protocols in mobile ad hoc
networks (MANETs) have been proposed to test with
different network areas such as 800 square meter and 500
square meter. The performances of two ad hoc routing
protocols are explored by using three performance metrics.
The network density is also varied with different node
numbers such as 10, 30 and 50 nodes. They are also simulated
at the various mobility speeds in both network areas because
every node in mobile ad hoc network changes dynamically.
The simulation time is set up to 500 seconds and the pause
time is 1 second. They are explored with the network
simulator (NS2) which is utilized as a main simulator for this
observation.
A. Simulation Environment
We make use of ns-2.34 which has support for simulating a
multi-hop wireless ad-hoc environment completed with
physical, data link, and medium access control (MAC) layer
models on ns-2. The protocols maintain a send buffer of 64
packets. It contains all data packets waiting for a route, such
as packets for which route discovery has started, but no reply
has arrived yet. To prevent indefinite buffering of packets,
packets waiting in the buffer for more than 30s are dropped.
All packets sent by the routing layer are queued at the
interface queue till the MAC layer transmits them. The
maximum size for interface queue is 50 packets. Routing
packets get higher priority than data packets. Our evaluations
are based on the simulation of 10, 30 and 50 wireless nodes
forming an ad hoc network, moving about over a square
(800m x 800m and 500m x 500m) flat space for 500s of
simulated time. A square space is chosen to allow free
movement of nodes with different density. To enable fair and
direct comparisons between the routing protocols, identical
loads and environmental conditions had to be maintained.
Each simulator run accepts an input scenario file describing
the motion of mobile nodes and also the sequence of packets
originated by the mobile node, along with time of change in
motion or packet origination pattern.
B. Performance Metrics
The performances of ad hoc routing protocols are explored
with three performance metrics in this observation. We
compare the performance of AODV and DSR according to
the following performance metrics: Packet delivery fraction:
the ratio of data packets delivered to the destinations to those
generated by the constant bit rate. Packet delivery fraction
(PDF) is the fraction of number of packet received at the
destination to the number of packet sent from the source
multiply by 100.
Average End-to-End delay of data packets: this includes all
possible delays caused by buffering during route discovery,
queuing at the interface queue, retransmission delays at the
MAC, propagation and transfer times. They are average
packet delivery fraction, average end-to-end delay and
average throughput.
Throughput is a very important parameter in evaluating the
modifications performance. It is calculated as the number of
bits received per second. Throughput is affected by the
number of packets dropped or left wait for a route which is
calculated as the summation of the number of packets
dropped or left wait for a route for all the nodes. There is two
representations of throughput; one is the amount of data
transferred over the period of time expressed in kilobits
per second (Kbps). The other is the packet delivery
percentage obtained from a ratio of the number of data
packets sent and the number of data packets received.
IV. RESULTS OF THE PERFORMANCES OF AODV AND DSR
This study presents the performances of two routing
protocols in mobile ad hoc network. They are performed in
the different coverage areas such as 800m × 800 m and 500m
× 500 m. Moreover, they are also observed with the different
number of mobile nodes and the mobility speed is varied, too.
The simulation time is set up to 500 seconds and the pause
time is 1 second. The performance results of AODV and DSR
protocols are presented with each performance metric at
various mobility speeds for each network area. Firstly, the
results of both protocols for a network with 800 square meters
are presented with each performance metric at different
speeds. Finally, the results of both protocols for a network
with 500 square meters are presented with each performance
metric at different speeds.
The results of the performances of AODV and DSR routing
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All Rights Reserved © 2012 IJSETR
International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR)
Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2012
protocols for 800m × 800m are illustrated in the following
figures. The packet delivery fractions of both routing
protocols for different network density are depicted in fig. 5
with the different speeds.
The results of the performances of AODV and DSR routing
protocols for 500m × 500m are illustrated in the following
figures. The packet delivery fractions of both routing
protocols for different network density are depicted in fig. 8
with the different speeds.
Fig. 5 Packet Delivery Fraction of AODV and DSR with 10,
30 and 50 wireless mobile nodes at different speeds.
The average end-to-end delays of both routing protocols for
different network density are depicted in fig. 6 with the
different speeds.
Fig. 8 Average PDF of AODV and DSR with 10, 30 and 50
wireless mobile nodes at different speeds
The average end-to-end delays of both routing protocols for
different network density are depicted in fig. 9 with the
different speeds.
Fig. 6 Average end-to-end delay of AODV and DSR with 10,
30 and 50 wireless mobile nodes at different speeds
The average throughputs of both routing protocols for
different network density are depicted in fig. 7 with the
different speeds.
Fig. 7 Average Throughput of AODV and DSR with 10, 30
and 50 wireless mobile nodes at different speeds
Fig. 9 Average end-to-end delay of AODV and DSR with 10,
30 and 50 wireless mobile nodes at different speeds
Fig. 10 Average Throughput of AODV and DSR with 10, 30
and 50 wireless mobile nodes at different speeds
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All Rights Reserved © 2012 IJSETR
International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR)
Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2012
The average throughputs of both routing protocols for
different network density are depicted in fig. 10 with the
different speeds.
V. CONCLUSION
The mobile ad hoc network has become popular in wireless
communications. This kind of networks is currently one of the
most important research subjects due to the huge variety of
applications. The performances of two ad hoc routing
protocols are evaluated in this observation. This study is
explored with the performances of AODV and DSR routing
protocols with 10, 30 and 50 wireless mobile nodes at the
different mobility speeds. It is also simulated for the different
network areas such as 500m × 500m and 800m × 800m. We
choose the traffic sources to be constant bit rate (CBR)
source. The source and destination pairs were spread
randomly over the network. Only 512-byte data packets were
used. Varying the number of CBR traffic sources was
approximately equivalent to varying the sending rate. Hence,
for these simulations we choose to fix sending rate at 4
packets per second, and used 3 different communication
patterns corresponding to 8, 25 and 40 connections according
to the number of nodes. We compare the performances of
AODV and DSR utilizing three performance metrics: packet
delivery fraction, average end-to-end delay and average
throughput.
For 800m × 800m network area, the PDF performance of
AODV is higher than that of DSR at all mobility speeds when
the number of nodes is set up to 10 nodes. However, there are
no very significant differences between those routing
protocols. When the number of nodes is set up to 30, the PDF
of AODV is significantly higher than that of DSR at all
speeds. And also, when the number of nodes is set up to 50,
the PDF of DSR is very lower than that of AODV at all
movement speeds. We can see that the higher the network
density, the lower the PDF performance for both routing
protocols. And then, we can also see that the lower the PDF
performance of DSR than AODV, the higher the network
density. Moreover, we can find that the higher the mobility
speed, the lower the PDF performances of both routing
protocols. Similarly, average end-to-end delay of DSR is
higher than that of AODV for all network densities at all high
movement speeds generally. On the same way, the throughput
performances of both routing protocols are not quite different
for the low network density at low mobility speeds. When the
network density and speed is high, the throughput of AODV is
higher than that of DSR. AODV routing protocol outperforms
DSR routing protocol with high network density at all
movement speeds.
For 500m × 500m network area, the PDF performances of
AODV routing protocol are very well (nearly 100%) at all
mobility speeds for the network density with 10 nodes. That
of DSR routing protocol is nearly the same output except at
the highest speed. When the network density is set up to 30
nodes, the PDF performances of both routing protocols are
over 90 % except the performance of DSR at the highest
speed (30m/s). When it is set up to 50 nodes, the PDF
performances of AODV is over 50% and that of DSR is
around 50%. For the network density with 10 nodes and 30
nodes, the average end-to-end delay of DSR is slightly lower
than that of AODV at all speeds except at the highest speed
(30 m/s). However, when the network density is set up to 50
nodes, the average delay of DSR is higher than that of AODV
at all speeds. Correspondingly, the throughput performances
of both routing protocols are not quite different for the
network density with 10 nodes and 30 nodes at all speeds. On
the other hand, when the network density is set up to 50 nodes,
the throughput of AODV is higher than that of DSR at all
speeds nearly.
According to these researches, we found that the routing
protocols can perform well in a small network area with low
network density because mobile ad hoc network is a
temporary network and it is also a self-configuration and
self-administration network without any centralized control.
Therefore, we can see that the larger the coverage network
area becomes, the lower the performance of the network can
achieve. We can exclaim that DSR routing protocol is
appropriate to small network area with low network density.
On the other hand, when we want to utilize the small network
area with high network density, AODV routing protocol is
very suitable according to this research. Moreover, AODV
routing protocol is much more appropriate than DSR routing
protocol for the large network area with high network
density.Acknowledgment
The author wishes to acknowledge especially to her
supervisor, Professor Dr. Zaw Min Naing, for his
accomplished guidance, persistent professional advices and
encouragement throughout the research and to her
co-supervisor, Dr. Hla Myo Tun, for his valuable suggestions
and priceless guidance.
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All Rights Reserved © 2012 IJSETR
International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR)
Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2012
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San San Naing is currently doing research for her doctoral degree in
Electronic and Communication from Mandalay Technological University,
Mandalay, Myanmar. Her main research interests are Mobile Ad hoc
networks, Routing Protocols and web Quality of Service in MANETs. Her
e-mail address is [email protected].
Zaw Min Naing is a professor from Technological University (Maubin),
Maubin. He has got many research papers and international journals papers
concerned with communication technology. His e-mail address is
[email protected].
Hla Myo Tun is associate professor, Department of Electronic and
Communication, Mandalay Technological University, Mandalay, Myanmar.
He received a lot of international journal papers related with control
engineering, communication technology and electronic circuit design. His
e-mail address is [email protected].
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