A

Synopsis
On

Performance Enhancement Ad Hoc Routing Protocols for Shortest Cost Coverage

ABSTRACT
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. A
number of routing protocols like Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), Ad Hoc On-Demand
Distance Vector Routing (AODV) and Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector (DSDV) have
been implemented. In this project, an attempt has been made to compare the performance of two
prominent on-demand reactive routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks: DSR and AODV,
along with the traditional proactive DSDV protocol. A simulation model with MAC and
physical layer models is used to study interlayer interactions and their performance
implications. The On-demand protocols, AODV and DSR perform better than the table-driven
DSDV protocol. Although DSR and AODV share similar on-demand behavior, the differences
in the protocol mechanics can lead to significant performance differentials. A variety of
workload and scenarios, as characterized by mobility, load and size of the ad hoc network were
simulated. The performance differentials are analyzed using varying network load, mobility, and
network size.

1. INTRODUCTION

ireless networking is an emerging technology that allows users to access information and
services electronically, regardless of their geographic position. Wireless networks can be

classified in two types.

1.1.

Organization Networks

Infrastructure network consists of a network with fixed and wired gateways. A mobile host
communicates with a bridge in the network (called base station) within its communication radius. The
mobile unit can move geographically while it is communicating. When it goes out of range of one base
station, it connects with new base station and starts communicating through it. This is called handoff. In
this approach the base stations are fixed. The second type of mobile wireless network is mobile adhoc network or infrastructure-less mobile networks. A mobile 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[4, 5]. Mobile ad-hoc networks are deployed
in applications such as disaster recovery and distributed collaborative computing where routes
are mostly multi-hop and network hosts communicate via packet radios[6]. Examples include
infrared, wireless RF, Bluetooth, ad-hoc sensor networks[7] or even wired based transceivers used
when emulating ad hoc networks. There is current and future need for dynamic ad hoc networking
technology [8]. The emerging field of mobile and nomadic computing, with its current emphasis on
mobile IP operations should gradually broaden and require highly-adaptive mobile networking
technology to effectively manage multi-hop, mobile ad-hoc network clusters which can

operate

autonomously or, more than likely, be attached at some point to the bigger network such as the Internet.
Most of the existing Internet protocols were designed to aid routing in a network with fixed
infrastructure. These protocols therefore are not considered good enough to support routing in an adhoc networking environment[9]. One of the first routing solutions was based on the idea of considering
each mobile nodes of an ad hoc network as a router and running some conventional routing
protocol[10]. However This scheme was not very successful as mobile ad-hoc network suffers from
frequent topology changes which results a large number of packets to be dropped or lost[11]. Later on
numbers of different protocols have been proposed as a routing solution for mobile ad hoc networks.
These can be classified as either tables driven[12] or on-demand protocol[13] types.
Pro-active protocols follow an approach similar to the one used in wired routing protocols. By
continuously evaluating the known route and attempting to discover new routes, they try to maintain
the most up-to-date map of the network. This allows them to efficiently forward packets as the route is
known at the time when the packet arrives at the node. Pro-active or table-driven protocols, in order to
maintain the constantly changing network graph due to new moving or failing nodes require continuous
updates which may consume large amounts of bandwidth. In contrast, reactive protocols determine the
proper route only when required. Therefore, when a packet needs to be forwarded In this instance the
node floods the network with a route-request and builds the route on demand from the responses it
receives. This technique does not require constant broadcasts and discovery, but on the other hand
causes delays since the routes are not already available. Additionally, the flooding of the network may
lead to additional control traffic, again putting strain on the limited bandwidth.

1.2.

Structure Less (Ad hoc) Networks

In ad hoc networks [5] all nodes are mobile and can be connected dynamically in an arbitrary manner.
As the range of each hosts wireless transmission is limited, so 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. So all nodes of these networks behave as routers and take part in discovery and
maintenance of routes to other nodes in the network. Ad hoc Networks are very useful in emergency
search-and-rescue operations, meetings or conventions in which persons wish to quickly share
information, and data acquisition operations in inhospitable terrain. This ad-hoc routing protocols can
be divided into two categories:
1.2.1. Table-Driven Routing Protocols: In table driven routing protocols, consistent and up-todate routing information to all nodes is maintained at each node.
1.2.2. On-Demand Routing Protocols: In On-Demand routing protocols, the routes are created as
and when required. When a source wants to send to a destination, it invokes the route
discovery mechanisms to find the path to the destination.

2. PREVIOUS WORK DONE IN THIS STUDY

Here, we discuss only AODV implementations. Uppsala University [9] and UCSB [10] implementation
are quite similar. They both use Netfilter to capture every packet and send it to user space by Netlink.
The daemon in the user space checks this packet for valid route. If the route doesnt exist, the daemon
sends route request, and wait for a certain time for route reply. If there is valid route reply, the packet
can be re-injected into kernel and routed by newly established route; otherwise, the packet is dropped.
The problem for this kind of implementation is every packet passes to user space, no matter if it has
route or not, and then passes back to kernel space. We know the overload of passing across two
privilege spaces of operating system is quite high. Since every packet passes between user and kernel
spaces twice, this will slow down the process.
The second generation [6] of Ad hoc networks emerged in 1980s, when the ad-hoc network

systems were further enhanced and implemented as a part of the SURAN (Survivable Adaptive Radio
Networks) program. This provided a packet-switched network to the mobile battlefield in an
environment without infrastructure. This program proved to be beneficial in improving the radios'
performance by making them smaller, and resilient to electronic attacks.
In the 1990s, the concept of commercial ad-hoc networks [6] arrived with notebook computers and
other viable communications equipment. At the same time, the idea of a collection of mobile nodes was
proposed at several research conferences.
The IEEE 802.11 [7] subcommittee had adopted the term "ad-hoc networks" and the research
community had started to look into the possibility of deploying ad-hoc networks in other areas of
application.
Later on in mid-1990s, within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Mobile AdHoc
Networking working group was formed to standardize routing protocols for ad-hoc networks. The
development of routing within the working group and the larger community resulted in the invention of
reactive and proactive routing protocols.
Soon after, the IEEE 802.11 subcommittee standardized a medium access protocol that was based on
collision avoidance and tolerated hidden terminals, making it usable for building mobile ad-hoc
networks prototypes out of notebooks and 802.11 PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card
International Association cards). Wireless local area products (IEEE 802.11, Hiperlan) provide inbuilding wireless access; however, they are usually deployed as access links only, packet relaying being
performed by traditional bridges or routers. Bluetooth is a low cost technology for short range
communication; its market is targeted towards PCs, phones, appliances, watches, etc. It allows multiple
nodes to connect to each other in a multi-hop arrangement.
Efforts are on to standardize different existing schemes for different network controls in a single
framework which could be taken as a standard for all the future applications utilizing ad-hoc networks
as a networking technology. Wireless devices are getting smaller, cheaper, and more sophisticated. As
these devices become more ubiquitous, organizations are looking for inexpensive ways to keep these
devices connected. Building an ad-hoc network could make that happen.
NIST [11] implementation is totally done within kernel space. There is no user space daemon running.
It also uses Netfilter to capture the packet. This might speed up process, but the kernel daemon may

potentially crash the whole system if there has any problem. (Actually there had been a bug in /proc file
which crashed the whole operating system.) Also the kernel daemon may consume too much kernel
resources and makes operating system respond sluggishly. Even more, this implementation requires
more programming skill since it is totally kernel system programming.

3. PROPOSED METHODOLOGY
3.1.

AD-HOC ROUTING PROTOCOLS EXPLANATION

Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector
The Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector (DSDV) [3] Routing Algorithm is based on the idea of the
classical Bellman-Ford Routing Algorithm with certain improvements. Every mobile station maintains a
routing table that lists all available destinations, the number of hops to reach the destination and the
sequence number assigned by the destination node. The sequence number is used to distinguish stale
routes from new ones and thus avoid the formation of loops. The stations periodically transmit their
routing tables to their immediate neighbors. A station also transmits its routing table if a significant
change has occurred in its table from the last update sent. So, the update is both time-driven and eventdriven.

The routing table updates can be sent in two ways: a full dump or an incremental update. A full
dump sends the full routing table to the neighbors and could span many packets whereas in an
incremental update only those entries from the routing table are sent that has a metric change since the
last update and it must fit in a packet. If there is space in the incremental update packet then those
entries may be included whose sequence number has changed. When the network is relatively stable,
incremental updates are sent to avoid extra traffic and full dump are relatively infrequent. In a fastchanging network, incremental packets can grow big so full dumps will be more frequent.
3.2.

Ad Hoc On-Demand Multipath Distance Vector Routing (AOmDV)

AOmDV [2] discovers routes on an as needed basis via a similar route discovery process. However,
AOmDV adopts a very different mechanism to maintain routing information. It uses traditional routing
tables, one entry per destination. This is in contrast to DSR, which can maintain multiple route cache
entries for each destination. Without source routing, AOmDV relies on routing table entries to
propagate an RREP back to the source and, subsequently, to route data packets to the destination.
AOmDV uses sequence numbers maintained at each destination to determine freshness of routing
information and to prevent routing loops. All routing packets carry these sequence numbers.

An important feature of AOmDV is the maintenance of timer-based states in each node, regarding
utilization of individual routing table entries. A routing table entry is expired if not used recently. A set
of predecessor nodes is maintained for each routing table entry, indicating the set of neighboring nodes
which use that entry to route data packets. These nodes are notified with RERR packets when the nexthop link breaks. Each predecessor node, in turn, forwards the RERR to its own set of predecessors, thus
effectively erasing all routes using the broken link. In contrast to DSR, RERR packets in AOmDV are
intended to inform all sources using a link when a failure occurs. Route error propagation in AOmDV
can be visualized conceptually as a tree whose root is the node at the point of failure and all sources
using the failed link as the leaves.

S
B
3.3.

RREQ (broadcast)
Reverse Path

Dynamic Source Routing (DSR)

The key distinguishing feature of DSR [4] 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. When a node in the ad hoc network attempts to send a data
packet to a destination for which it does not already know the route, it uses a route discovery process to
dynamically determine such a route. Route discovery works by flooding the network with route request
(RREQ) packets. Each node receiving an RREQ rebroadcasts it, unless it is the destination or it has a
route to the destination in its route cache. Such a node replies to the RREQ with a route reply (RREP)
packet that is routed back to the original source. RREQ and RREP packets are also source routed. The
RREQ builds up the path traversed across the network. The RREP routes itself back to the source by
traversing this path backward. The route carried back by the RREP packet is cached at the source for

future use. If any link on a source route is broken, the source node is notified using a route error
(RERR) packet. The source removes any route using this link from its cache. A new route discovery
process must be initiated by the source if this route is still needed. DSR makes very aggressive use of
source routing and route caching.

4. EXPECTED OUTCOME OF THE STUDY

4.1.

Traffic Model

Continuous bit rate (CBR) traffic sources are used. The source-destination pairs are spread randomly
over the network. Only 512-byte data packets can be use. The number of source-destination pairs and
the packet sending rate in each pair is varied to change the offered load in the network.
4.2.

Mobility Model

The mobility model uses the random waypoint model in a rectangular field. The field configurations
used is: 500 m 500 m field with 50 nodes. Here, each packet starts its journey from a random location
to a random destination with a randomly chosen speed (uniformly distributed between 020 m/s). Once
the destination is reached, another random destination is targeted after a pause. The pause time, which
affects the relative speeds of the mobiles, is varied. Simulations are run for 100 simulated seconds.
Identical mobility and traffic scenarios are used across protocols to gather fair results. Mobility models
were created for the simulations using 50 nodes, with pause times of 0, 10, 20, 40, 100 seconds,
maximum speed of
4.3.

20 m/s, topology boundary of 500 500 and simulation time of 100 secs.

PRESENTATION METRIC

4.3.1. Packet Delivery Fraction

The ratio of the data packets delivered to the destinations to those generated by the CBR sources is
known as packet delivery fraction.

4.3.2. Average End-to-End Delay

Average end to end delay includes all possible delays caused by buffering during route discovery
latency, queuing at the interface queue, retransmission delays at the MAC, and propagation and transfer
times of data packets.
4.3.3. Normalized Routing Load
The number of routing packets transmitted per data packet delivered at the destination. Each hop-wise
transmission of a routing packet is counted as one transmission. The first two metrics are the most
important for best-effort traffic. The routing load metric evaluates the efficiency of the routing protocol.
Note, however, that these metrics are not completely independent. For example, lower packet delivery
fraction means that the delay metric is evaluated with fewer samples. In the conventional wisdom, the
longer the path lengths, the higher the probability of a packet drops. Thus, with a lower delivery
fraction, samples are usually biased in favor of smaller path lengths and thus have less delay.
4.4.

PERFORMANCE RESULTS

For all the simulations, the same movement models can be use, the number of traffic sources was fixed
at 20, the maximum speed of the nodes was set to 20 m/s and the pause time was varied as 0 s, 10 s, 20
s, 40 s and 100 s.
4.4.1. Packet Delivery Fraction
The On-demand protocols, DSR and AODV performed particularly well, delivering over 85% of the
data packets regardless of mobility rate.
4.4.2. Average End-End Packet Delivery
The average end-to-end delay of packet delivery was higher in DSDV as compared to both DSR and
AODV. In summary, both the On-demand routing protocols, AODV and DSR outperformed the Tabledriven routing protocol; DSDV and the reasons are discussed later. Figures 1 and 2 highlight the
relative performance of the three routing protocols. All of the protocols deliver a greater percentage of
the originated data packets when there is little node mobility (i.e., at large pause time), converging to
100% delivery when there is no node motion. Next, since both AODV and DSR did better, an attempt

was made to evaluate the performance difference between the two by varying the Mobility pattern and
Number of traffic sources.

Fig 1: Packet Delivery Fraction (PDF) Vs Pause time

Fig 2: Average Delay Vs Pause Time

4.5.

PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

The simulation results bring out some important characteristic differences between the routing
protocols. The presence of high mobility implies frequent link failures and each routing protocol reacts
differently during link failures. The different basic working mechanism of these protocols leads to the
differences in the performance. DSDV fails to converge below lower pause times. At higher rates of
mobility (lower pause times), DSDV does poorly, dropping to a 70% packet delivery ratio. Nearly all of
the dropped packets are lost because a stale routing table entry directed them to be forwarded over a
broken link. As described in the earlier section, DSDV maintains only one route per destination and
consequently, each packet that the MAC layer is unable to deliver is dropped since there are no
alternate routes. For DSR and AODV, packet delivery ratio is independent of offered traffic load, with
both protocols delivering between 85% and 100% of the packets in all cases. Since DSDV uses the

table-driven approach of maintaining routing information, it is not as adaptive to the route changes that
occur during high mobility.
4.6.

Effect of Mobility

In the presence of high mobility, link failures can happen very frequently. Link failures trigger new
route discoveries in AODV since it has at most one route per destination in its routing table. Thus, the
frequency of route discoveries in AODV is directly proportional to the number of route breaks. The
reaction of DSR to link failures in comparison is mild and causes route discovery less often. The reason
is the abundance of cached routes at each node. Thus, the route discovery is delayed in DSR until all
cached routes fail. But with high mobility, the chance of the caches being stale is quite high in DSR.
Eventually when a route discovery is initiated, the large number of replies received in response is
associated with high MAC overhead and cause increased interference to data traffic.
Routing Load Effect
DSR almost always has a lower routing load than AODV. This can be attributed to the caching strategy
used by DSR. By virtue of aggressive caching, DSR is more likely to find a route in the cache, and
hence resorts to route discovery less frequently than AODV.
FUTURE WORK
In the future, extensive complex simulations could be carried out using the project code, in order to
gain a more in-depth performance analysis of the ad hoc routing protocols. Other new protocol
performance could be studied too.
REFERENCES
[1]

NS-2, The ns Manual (formally known as NS Documentation) available at

http:

//www.isi.edu/nsnam/ ns/doc.
[2]

Ian D. Chakeres and Elizabeth M. Belding-Royer. AODV Routing Protocol Implementation Design

[3] Charle E. Perkins and Pravin Bhagwat. Highly Dynamic Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector
Routing (DSDV) for Mobile Computers.
[4]

David B. Johnson, David A. Maltz and Josh Broch. DSR: The Dynamic Source Routing protocol
for Multi-Hop Wireless Ad Hoc networks.

[5] Magnus Frodigh, Per Johansson and Peter Larsson. Wireless ad hoc networkingThe art of
networking without a network.
[6] Park. V and Corson. M. Temporally-Ordered Routing Algorithm (TORA) Version 1. Functional
Specification.
[7]

Gao, Fang, Lu, Yuan, Zhang, Qingshun and Li, Chunli. Simulation and Analysis for the
Performance of the Mobile Ad Hoc Network Routing Protocols.