MIT International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology Vol. 1 No.

2 Aug 2011 pp 95-101 ISSN 2230-7621 (Print Version) 2230-763X (Online Version) MIT Publications

95

An Ns-2 Simulation Based Comparison of MANET Routing Protocols

Prachi Gupta
Asst. Prof., Dept. of CS & IT Moradabad Institute of Technology, Moradabad

Anurag Malik
Associate Prof., Dept. of CS & IT, Moradabad Institute of Technology, Moradabad

AbstractIn MANET nodes change position quite frequently, which means that we need a routing protocol that quickly adapts to topology changes. The main classes of routing protocols are Proactive, Reactive and Hybrid. In this paper we have attempted to compare the performance of one prominent proactive and one reactive routing protocol for MANET:- Destination Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV) and Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocols respectively. We have done this evaluation by means of simulation using Network Simulator 2. The results presented in this work illustrate the importance in carefully evaluating and implementing routing protocols in an ad-hoc environment. Our studies have shown that reactive protocols perform better than proactive protocols. Further DSR has performed well for the performance parameters namely delivery fraction, throughput and routing overhead while DSDV performed better in terms of average delay and energy consumption.

protocols namely DSDV and DSR in MANET using NS-2 [8, 12] which is a discrete event simulator developed at Berkeley University. Our study has shown that reactive protocol performs better than proactive. Also DSR has performed better than DSDV in terms of Delivery Fraction, Throughput and Routing Overhead while DSDV performed better in terms of Average Delay and Energy Consumption. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In section 2 we briefly describe the routing protocols that we evaluate. In section 3 we discuss the most important previous studies on the subject and explain our work. Section 4 presents the Simulation environment used for evaluation of the said protocols. In Section 5 we present our simulation results and observations. Finally, section 6 concludes the paper.

2. MANET ROUTING PROTOCOLS

In this section we briefly describe and analyze two different KEYWORDS: MANET, DSDV, DSR, RERR, NS-2, PDF, routing protocols, DSDV and DSR, which we evaluate. DSDV is a proactive routing protocol while DSR is a reactive routing NRL, ECSDD and NL. protocol [6, 10].

1. INTRODUCTION
A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is a collection of nodes, which have the possibility to connect on a wireless medium and form an arbitrary and dynamic network with wireless links [7, 3]. This means that links between the nodes can change during time, new nodes can join the network, and other nodes can leave it. There are neither fixed routers nor fixed locations for the routers as in infrastructure networks. Thus in MANET nodes collaborate by forwarding packets for each other to allow them to communicate outside range of direct wireless transmission. Thus the basic routing problem in these networks is that of finding an ordered series of intermediate nodes that can transport a packet across a network from its source to its destination by forwarding the packet along this series of intermediate nodes. The problem of maintaining a consistent and correct routing view becomes harder as there is an increase in the number of nodes and as the rate of change in the actual topology increases. There is a lot of work done on evaluating performances of various MANET routing protocols. In our paper we have evaluated performances of two widely used MANET routing

DSDV PROTOCOL
DSDV [4, 26] is a hop-by-hop distance vector routing protocol. Each mobile node maintains a routing table that stores for all reachable destinations the next-hop and number of hops to reach that destination, and the sequence number assigned by the destination. The routing tables updates are time-driven and event-driven. DSDV applies two types of routing updates: full dump or incremental update. After receiving an update, neighboring nodes utilizes it to compute the routing table entries. The list which is maintained is called routing table. DSDV possesses routes availability to all destinations at all times, which involves much less delay in the route setup process. The use of sequence number distinguishes stale routes from new ones, where routes with higher sequence numbers are favorable. However, the updates due to broken links lead to a heavy control overhead during high mobility, proportional to the number of nodes in the network and therefore affecting scalability. DSDV responds to broken links by invalidating all routes that contain this link. The routes are immediately assigned an

MIT International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology Vol. 1 No. 2 Aug 2011 pp 95-101 ISSN 2230-7621 (Print Version) 2230-763X (Online Version) MIT Publications

96

infinite metric and an incremented sequence number. If the link to a node is up again, the routes will be re-established when the node broadcasts its routing table.

5. SIMULATION RESULT AND OBSERVATIONS

In this section we present our simulation observations that compare the performance of the protocols that we described in section 2.

DSR PROTOCOL
DSR [13, 5] protocol is an on-demand routing protocol, based on the concept of source routing. Each data packet follows the source route stored in its header, giving the address of each node through which the packet should be forwarded in order to reach its final destination. Mobile nodes maintain route caches containing the source routes that the nodes have learned. DSR uses no periodic routing messages, and relies on the MAC layer support for link failures detection. DSR has two basic modes of operation, which are route discovery and route maintenance. When a node wants to send a packet to a destination, it checks its routing cache if there is an existing route to that destination or not. If it finds a route, then it uses it to send the packet to the destination. Otherwise it starts the route discovery process again. When the data link layer encounters a fatal transmitting problem, route error (RERR) packets are generated at a node to the original sender of the packet encountering the error. A node receiving a RERR, removes the hop in error from its cache and all routes containing the hop are truncated at that point. DSR uses no periodic routing messages, thereby reducing network bandwidth consumption, minimizing control overhead, conserving battery power and avoiding large routing updates throughout the Ad-hoc network. Moreover, loop formation is eliminated and the source learns all possible routes to the destination as well as to the intermediate nodes, however, each packet carries a considerable routing overhead due to carrying the source route, which is directly proportional to the path length. Stale route cache information may cause inconsistency during the route construction phase.

PACKET DELIVERY FRACTION (PDF)

Figures 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 show packet delivery ratio verses various network parameters. The red line shows graph for DSR and the blue line shows the graph for DSDV protocol. Generally the graph for the DSR protocol lies above than that of DSDV for most cases. However in certain cases the DSDV protocol is also better. In case of less number of nodes both protocols performed well but DSR outperformed DSDV because of its adaptive nature. As the number of nodes is increased the performance deteriorates because more and more nodes try to access the common medium, thus number of collisions increase thereby increasing packet loss and decreasing the Delivery Ratio. When pause time is varied, delivery ratio for DSR is near to 100% because of multiple path information in its route cache. In case of failure in one route other route will be used rather than initiating route request. DSDV performed poor in case of low pause time because in rapid change topology it is not adaptive to route changes in updating its table. From the results it is evident that as the speed increases; the performance of both DSR and DSDV deteriorates. But dropped packet is higher in DSDV because all of the dropped packets are lost as stale routing table entry directed them to be forwarded over broken link. In contrast DSR builds routing information as and when routes are created makes it more adaptive and results in better performance. When speed increases, the number of dropped packet increases. The main reason for dropping packets is that the protocol is sending packets on a broken route, that it thinks, is valid and that packet in the buffer are dropped because of congestion and timeouts [2].

3. PREVIOUS WORK

Most of the previous work is limited on performing simulations for ad hoc networks with a few parameters. Our AVERAGE END-TO-END DELAY work differs in that we use maximum number of evaluation Figures 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 show average end-to-end delay and network parameters. We observe and comment on the verses various network parameters. In case of average delay, behavior of each protocol. DSDV was better than DSR due to its proactive nature. This is because when a node receives a route request for which it 4. SIMULATION ENVIRONMENT has the answer in its routing table, it immediately replies with the route rather than forwarding it to the destination [13]. We have used network simulator ns 2.32 for simulation, most With the DSR, a mobile node continues to use a route to a widely used network simulator and freely available. We gateway until it is broken. In some cases this route can be simulated network for simulation time of 700 sec and area of 500 m 500 m. We have used Packet Delivery Fraction, pretty long and even if the mobile node is much closer to Average End to End Delay, Normalized Routing Overhead, another gateway it does not use this gateway, but continues to Throughput, Energy Consumption per successful Data send the data packets along the long route to the gateway further Delivery and Network Lifetime as performance parameters away until the route is broken. while varying various network parameters such as Number of As the pause time is varied, the average delay for DSDV is Nodes, Pause Time and Maximum Speed [9]. almost constant as it uses route already in the table, and no

MIT International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology Vol. 1 No. 2 Aug 2011 pp 95-101 ISSN 2230-7621 (Print Version) 2230-763X (Online Version) MIT Publications

97

It is also evident that as mobility increases; the performance of both DSR and DSDV deteriorates. But DSR performs better than DSDV. The reason is that link outage becomes more frequent causing a higher packet drop probability. However, DSDV throughput degrades as speed increases since a stale routing table entry causes data packets to be forwarded over a NORMALIZED ROUTING LOAD (NRL) broken link. Higher speeds cause frequent link changes and Figures 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 show Normalized Routing Load connection failures. Overall performance of DSR is best, since verses various network parameters. The Normalized Routing DSR already has a route for certain destination. Load is less for the DSR approach than for the DSDV approach. Also it can be seen that for DSR, it is fairly stable ENERGY CONSUMPTION PER SUCCESSFUL DATA even with increase in number of sources. A relatively stable DELIVERY (ECSDD) normalized routing load is a desirable property for scalability Figures 5.1 and 5.2 show the ECSDD of DSDV and DSR of the protocols. We found that by virtue of aggressive caching, DSR is more likely to find the route in the cache and hence verses various network parameters. For low speed of mobility, the route discovery process occurs less frequently hence the DSDV uses less energy per packet because the probability of the link breakage is less. Because of routing table entries, routing overhead for DSR is less. While periodic routing updates constitute to DSDV routing packets are sent or forwarded over the stored links. It leads overhead. So it is higher compared to DSR overhead. The DSDV to consume less amount of energy for successful overhead for DSDV increased as increase in number of nodes communication. But periodic transmission of updates may have increased the size of their routing table and also number sometime consume higher energy [11]. DSR consumes higher energy per packet than DSDV. This of broadcast. is due to the fact that although DSR is advantageous from the From Figure 3.2, we can also observe that normalized overload for DSDV is almost constant with respect to pause cached route yet cached routes are not valid for long in high time. This is because of its proactive nature due to which it mobility. DSR start route discovery as soon as there is demand offers constant routing overhead in all cases. While for reactive of routes. On demand, route discovery leads to energy protocol DSR as we increased pause time routing overload consumption to construct routes. High mobility increases has decreased. This is because as routing pause time increases, incidence of link and connection failures. The ECSDD of DSDV is incremented when the numbers of mobility decreases and thus link breakage become rare which in turn will decrease number of route request from sources connections become large. This is due to the fact that large number of nodes causes large number of update messages to and hence decreasing overhead. In case of both DSDV and DSR the normalized routing load be exchanged periodically. Energy consumption of DSR is almost the same with respect to node speed. The reason for increases when the number of connections increases. This is constant NRL of DSDV is that it is a table driven protocol, so due to the fact that DSR is on-demand routing protocol. Hence, a node does not need to find a route before transmitting packets. this feature increases energy consumption of routing overhead.

time is required to find route as opposite to DSR as it will wait for route formation. As the speed increases; the performance of both DSR and DSDV deteriorates. But DSDV performs better than DSR. This performance of DSDV is because of the reason that DSDV is a table driven protocol and it keeps alternate route for destinations, therefore availability of routes in the routing table when nodes are moving at higher rate leads to lesser delay than DSR.

throughput is more or less constant because of its proactive nature. It is also found that the throughput for both DSDV and DSR is almost constant with respect to pause time but DSR performs better than DSDV because of its adaptive nature.

But due to periodic updates sent by the nodes, the NRL is NETWORK LIFETIME (NL) high compared to DSR. And as for DSR it makes use of route caches which increases the likelihood of finding a route in the Figures 6.1 and 6.2 show the network Lifetime of both the cache and hence the route discovery process occurs less MANET routing protocols. DSDV routing protocol makes the frequently hence the routing overhead for DSR is constant. network energetic longer than DSR. This is due to the fact that DSDV energy consumption per packet is less than DSR. In addition, DSDV balances the energy consumption better THROUGHPUT than DSR. For the case of DSDV, all nodes exchange the update Figures 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 show Throughput verses various whether they are active or inactive periodically. But DSR uses network parameters. From the results it is clear that when the only the active nodes for route establishment. This leads to topology is sparse; there are high packet losses because number particular nodes to be repeatedly to engage in route discovery of connections is less. Thus the throughput is low. As the and data packet transmission. This restricts appropriate load number of nodes is increased the performance of DSR increases balancing. The network life time is determined by less energy as the chances of alternate routes increases. But for DSDV the consumption and appropriate load balancing.

MIT International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology Vol. 1 No. 2 Aug 2011 pp 95-101 ISSN 2230-7621 (Print Version) 2230-763X (Online Version) MIT Publications

98

6. CONCLUSION
We have compared one Table-driven routing protocol, DSDV, and one On-demand routing protocol, DSR. The results of the simulation indicate that performance of the DSR protocol is superior to DSDV. DSR gives high delivery ratio and throughput with low normalized load; but at the cost of high delay and more power consumption. The main lesson learned from this study is that DSR is well suited for mobile Ad-hoc networks especially when the mobility rate is high. DSR has a route discovery mode that uses request messages to find new routes. DSR is based on source routing and learns more routes. DSR also has the advantage that it supports unidirectional links. DSDV will probably be good enough in networks, which allows the protocol to converge in reasonable time i.e., the mobility, cannot be too high. As far as energy efficiency is considered, DSDV outperforms DSR. In general, energy consumption of successful data packet includes energy consumption to routing overhead. High ECSDD causes early die of a node. It leads to link breakage (network partition). In case of DSR, staled out routes due to mobility raise the rate of energy consumption, which drains out battery energy early. This is not stopped here but it continues for further energy scarification for route maintenance. When the number of connections increases, it becomes more severe. So, we can conclude that DSR is suitable for achieving high delivery ratio while DSDV is an energy efficient protocol. Fig. 1.1 PDF v/s Number of Nodes

FUTURE SCOPE
Ad-hoc networking is a rather hot concept in computer communications. This means that there is much research going on and many issues that remain to be solved. Due to limited time, we have only focused on two routing protocols. However there are many issues that could be subject to further studies. Observing the behavior of the protocols for other performance parameters like route length or evaluation parameters like transmission range. Comparing more routing protocols, for instance AODV, OLSR, ZRP. Evaluating the routing performance and energy efficiency using different mobility models; like, random way point, random walk through mobility models. Studying the energy efficiency of routing protocols from quality of service provisioning. Evaluating simulations which take unidirectional links into consideration. Considering simulations which consider multiple connection patterns. Fig. 1.2 PDF v/s Pause Time

Fig. 1.3 PDF v/s Maximum Speed

MIT International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology Vol. 1 No. 2 Aug 2011 pp 95-101 ISSN 2230-7621 (Print Version) 2230-763X (Online Version) MIT Publications

99

Fig. 2.1 Average End-to-End Delay v/s Number of Nodes

Fig. 3.1 NRL v/s Number of Nodes

Fig. 2.2 Average End-to-End Delay v/s Pause Time

Fig. 3.2 NRL v/s Pause Time

Fig. 2.3 Average End-to-End Delay v/s Maximum Speed

Fig. 3.3 NRL v/s Maximum Speed

MIT International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology Vol. 1 No. 2 Aug 2011 pp 95-101 ISSN 2230-7621 (Print Version) 2230-763X (Online Version) MIT Publications

100

Fig. 4.1 Throughput v/s Number of Nodes

Fig. 5.1 Energy Consumed v/s Number of Nodes

Fig. 4.2 Throughput v/s Pause Time

Fig. 5.2 Energy Consumed v/s Maximum Speed

Fig. 4.3 Throughput v/s Maximum Speed

Fig. 6.1 Network Lifetime v/s Number of Nodes

MIT International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology Vol. 1 No. 2 Aug 2011 pp 95-101 ISSN 2230-7621 (Print Version) 2230-763X (Online Version) MIT Publications

101

[4] [5]

Charles E. Perkins, Ad Hoc Networking, Addison Wesley, Edition 1, 2001. David B. Johnson and David A.Maltz, Dynamic source routing in ad hoc wireless networks, In Mobile Computing, edited by Tomasz Imielinski and Hank Korth, Chapter 5, Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 153-181. E.M. Royer and C.K. Toh, A review of current routing protocols for ad hoc mobile wireless networks, IEEE Personal Communications, 6(2), April 1999, pp. 4655; Proceedings of IEEE ICC98, August 1998, pp. 156160. Geetha Jayakumar and Gopinath Ganapathy: Performance Comparison of Mobile Ad-hoc Network Routing Protocols, IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, Vol. 7, No 11, November 2007, pp. 77-84. Matthias Transier Ns2 tutorial running simulations . Mohammed F. Al-Hunaity, Salam A. Najim and Ibrahiem M. El-Emary: A Comparative Study between Various Protocols of MANET Networks, American Journal of Applied Sciences 4 (9), ISSN 1546-9239, 2007, pp 663-665.

[6]

[7]

[8]

Fig. 6.2 Network Lifetime v/s Maximum Speed

[9]

REFERENCES
[1]

[2]

[3]

Alemneh Adane, Active Communication Energy Efficient [10] S.R. Das, C.E. Perkins and E.M. Royer: Performance comparison of two on-demand routing protocols for ad hoc Routing Protocol of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETS), networks, Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM 2000, Conference A thesis report submitted to the school of Graduate Studies on Computer Communications. Nineteenth Annual Joint of Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, April 1998. Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Asha Ambhaikar and Lokesh Kumar Sharm, Exploring the Societies, March 2000, pp. 312. Behavior of Mobile Ad Hoc Network Routing Protocols with Reference to Speed and Terrain Range, Proceedings of the [11] T. Rappaport, Wireless Communications: Principles and International Multi Conferences of Engineers and Computer Practice, Prentice Hall, 1996. Scientists, Hong Kong , Vol II, March 17-19, 2010. [12] www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/tutorial Marc Greis tutorial on ns2. C.K. Toh, Maximum battery life routing to support ubiquitous mobile computing in wireless adhoc [13] Yasser Kamal Hassan, Mohamed Hashim Abd El-Aziz, and Ahmed Safwat Abd El-Radi: Performance Evaluation of networks, Communications Magazine, IEEE, Vol. 39, 2001, Mobility Speed over MANET. pp. 138-147.