Performance Comparison of Manet Routing Protocols based on real-life scenarios.

Abstract

Ad-hoc networking is a concept in computer communications, which means that users wanting to communicate with each other form a temporary network, without any form of centralized administration. Each node participating in the network acts both as host and a router and must therefore be willing to forward packets for other nodes. For this purpose, a routing protocol is needed. An ad-hoc network has certain characteristics, which imposes new demands on the routing protocol. The most important characteristic is the dynamic topology, which is a consequence of node mobility. Nodes can change position quite frequently, which means can consist of laptops and personal digital assistants and are often very limited in resources such as CPU capacity, storage capacity, battery power and bandwidth. A variety of routing protocols for MANETs have been developed by network researchers and designers primarily to improve the performance of MANETs with respect to correct and efficient route establishment between a pair of stations for message delivery. Examples of commonly used MANET routing protocols include ad-hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV), highly dynamic destination-sequenced distance vector routing protocol (DSDV) and optimized link state routing protocol (OLSR). A good understanding of the effect of each of these routing protocols on a typical IEEE 802.11 network will assist an efficient design and deployment of appropriate MANETs. This present thesis aims to study the performance evaluation and comparison of three MANET routing protocols in real life simulation scenarios located in Greece, drawing valuable conclusions and future improvements.