OLSR Protocol as one of the effective Routing Algorithm in Mobile Ad-Hoc Network

Assignment 1 N/W 2011

P58888 - FTSM Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 1st March, 2011
Abstract- Routing algorithm is one of the most important parts in the network layer. There are different types of routing algorithm that is implemented for different kind of network. In advanced technology, people like to access network from any place at anytime. This requires high performance of network. Yet wireless network is now on demand. More people access the network will give a dense network environment. This paper will discussed briefly the basic definition of routing, two main categories on routing algorithm, two main types of dynamic routing to the overview of OLSR and why it is the one of effectively routing protocols in MANET by comparing it with the earliest MANET routing protocol AODV and list the advantages of OLSR.

KEYWORDS: routing algorithm, ad hoc network, distance vector routing algorithm, link state routing algorithm, optimized link state algorithm, mobile ad hoc network, ad hoc distance vector protocol. I. INTRODUCTION Wireless communication is now one of the most crucial communications in the world. The need for this type of communication is increasingly due to rapid changing in the technology and people always on the move, demanding rapid access to the network. People need to get information fast anywhere at any time by using new portable devices such as notebook, android phone, iPad, iPhone and other type of smart phone. These increasing of technology make people choose to use their smart phone due to the portability and easy to bring to anywhere. They now can access their email, blog or any other e-commerce technology available by using the new gadget. There are many types of network available that are commonly use by users to access the internet. Some of the networks are WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network), Mobile IP and MANET (Mobile Ad-Hoc Network). In the world of Information technology, people always use many kinds of network but they do not know how it works. When people using a large network, there is a routing at the network layer that works to select the best route destination to send the packets that users sent in network traffic. Routing plays an important part because it facilitates large networks. In this paper, I will discuss about routing algorithm and focus to OLSR as one of the most effective routing algorithm in MANET. Routing is a part of network layer. The main function of network layer is routing packets from the source machine to the destination machine. [11] Routing is a process of selecting

paths in a network along which to send network traffic. The network layer must determine the route or path taken by packets as they flow from a sender to a receiver. The algorithms that calculate these paths are referred to as routing algorithms or also known as routing protocols [11, 12]. Routing algorithm is responsible for deciding which output line an incoming packet should be transmitted on. A routing algorithm will build routing tables to contain the mapping from the networks and host addresses to output ports in the router. Router then will find the best route by using this routing algorithm to send packets from source to the destination. Information in the routing tables can be static, with routes manually entered by the network administrator, or dynamic, where routers communicate to exchange connection and route information using various routing algorithm. Routers communicate with one another and maintain their routing tables through the transmission of a variety of messages. By analyzing routing updates from all other routers, a router can build a detailed picture of network topology. [7]

Fig. 1. The Routers in a network and the Routing Process [7]

Routing algorithm can be grouped into 2 major classes: Non-Adaptive/ Static Routing and Adaptive/ Dynamic Routing. Static routing has no algorithm. It does not base their decision on any measurements or estimates of current topology and traffic. The route is computed or downloaded in advanced into the router. Static routing configuration is not fault tolerant. When there is a change in the network or a

failure occurs between two statically defined nodes, traffic will not be rerouted. This means that anything that wishes to take an affected path will either have to wait for the failure to be repaired or the static route to be updated by the administrator before restarting its journey. Most requests will time out (ultimately failing) before these repairs can be made [14]. Therefore in this latest technology we will focus more on dynamic routing. Dynamic routing differs in changing their routing decision to reflect changes in the topology or in the network traffic. Dynamic routing solves the static routing problems by creating a table automatically base on information carried by routing algorithm and allowing the network to act automatically to avoid network failures and blockage. There are two types of dynamic algorithm that are most popular: Distance Vector Algorithm and Link State Algorithm. Distance Vector algorithm is based on BellmanFord routing algorithm. It operates by having each router maintain a table giving the best known distance to each destination and which link to use to get there [11]. Each router has information about the routers it is directly connected to, but it does not know about every router in the network. It is called decentralized routing algorithm. Link State routing algorithm in contrast is a global routing algorithm. Its function by advertising each router's connected interfaces to every other device in the routing domain. Every router has complete information about all other routers in the network and the traffic status of the network. Effectively, each device builds a database of the full network topology, and uses this database to determine the best path to each destination network. II. LINK STATE AND DISTANCE VECTOR ROUTING ALGORITHM Link state routing algorithm is a new algorithm that replaced the used of distance vector algorithm that was used in the ARPANET until 1979. OLSR is one of link state routing. As link state routing is the basic routing for OLSR, I will discuss more on the advantages of link state routing comparing to distance vector routing. This section also will discover the limitations of distance vector routing that convinced me to choose link state algorithm as my discussion. A. How Link States Routing Algorithm Works Link state routing algorithm operates by flooding link state information into the network. The link state information is stored in a link state database, sometimes called a topological database, and each router has a copy of this database. The link state database includes information such as the number of ports on each router, the Network Layer address and current state of those ports, and the subnetworks to which those ports connect. In a very real sense, there is sufficient information in the database for the router to generate a complete map of the internetwork, to label each router with its appropriate addresses, and to label each port with its current state and cost. Then, using a shortest path first (SPF) algorithm each router can calculate the shortest path from itself to every known

subnetwork and use the information to populate a routing table [1]. The basic idea of link state routing can be simplify into five parts. Each router must do the following things to make it work [11]: 1. Discover its neighbors and learn their network addresses. 2. Set the distance or cost metric to each of its neighbors. 3. Construct a packet telling all it has just learned. 4. Send this packet to and receive all the packets from all other routers. 5. Compute the shortest path to every other router. In effects, the complete topology is distributed to every router. Then the shortest path algorithm can be run at each router to find the best route to every other router. B. Comparing Link State and Distance Vector Routing Algorithm Based on many studies, link state routing has more advantages comparing to distance vector. One of the main advantages is link state routing provide greater flexibility and sophistication than distance vector routing because it reduce overall broadcast traffic and make better decisions about routing by taking characteristics such as bandwidth, delay, reliability and load consideration, instead of basing their decision solely on distance or hop count [15]. Link state routing also let all routers in the network to have a consistent view of all the routers in the network. This will reduces the convergence time of the network by each router maintains its own database, which should be identical to all other databases in the network. Convergence time is now bound by the time it takes a message to travel across the network and the interval between routing table generations. This means that the size of the internetwork contributes a negligible amount to the convergence time, making link state routing protocols suitable for very large internetworks. Therefore in link state algorithm, loops are essentially impossible. Comparing to distance vector algorithm, it did not prevent routing loops from happening and suffers from the count-toinfinity problem. The basic of the count-to-infinity problems is that if A tells B that it has a path somewhere, there is no way B to know if it is on which part. Distance vector algorithm routers also may have conflict which different routers have different perception as to the state of the network [16]. This loops then will refers to the slow convergence of time compare to link state algorithm. Other advantages of link state algorithm comparing to distance vector algorithm is the fact that the information flooded into the network usually consists of small packets with a few items of link state information, instead of full routing tables, means that a link state algorithm generally uses less bandwidth than a distance vector algorithm. Although link state algorithm seems to be effective routing algorithm compare to distance vector algorithm, it has some limitations. Due to lot of tables need to be updated automatically, it need higher CPU or memory. However in this new modern technology this problem could be easily overcome. Most CPU or any gadget has big memories. One of

the main limitations of this algorithm is that it is complex to implement. All routers in the network require redundant databases. Routing table calculation is also a more complex process than simply comparing routing table entries. This mean, link state algorithm tends to be more memory-intensive and processor-intensive than distance vector routing algorithm. III. MANET MOBILE ADHOC NETWORK A. Introduction to Mobile Ad hoc Network In the world that is highly developed, people constantly demanding connectivity from anywhere at any time. People who always on the move need wireless access to connect to the internet for their social networking activities, businesses, changing information and so on. As far the technology increase, we cannot solely depending on the standard wireless that based on IEEE 802.11 which needs the base station. Here where ad hoc networks take place. Ad hoc network can be setup anywhere and it is connected by wireless link that are commonly used in mobile phone. MANET is a mobile ad hoc network is [18] an autonomous system of mobile routers connected to wireless link that are free to move randomly and organize themselves randomly. Ad hoc network is a wireless technology that has no access point. The network topology is dynamic and may change rapidly. Messages are exchanged and relayed between routers (nodes). In fact, an ad hoc network has the capability of making communications possible even between two routers that are not in direct range with each other. Hence MANET is a collection of independent mobile nodes that can communicate with each other via radio waves. This network is autonomous, no infrastructure is needed and nodes can perform the both hosts and routers. However this lead to high energy consumption while using this network. B. Routing Protocols for Ad hoc Networks Routing protocol (algorithm) is still needed even in ad hoc networks. This is to ensure the packet sent from the sources will be delivered to its destination. There are two main categories for MANET, Reactive Protocols and Proactive protocol. Reactive protocol also known as on demand protocol does not take initiative for finding routes. The topology data is given when needed. It will flood the network with query messages to establish routes. The advantages is it does not use bandwidth except when needed but it has much network overhead in flooding process when querying for routes. This will initial delay in traffic. The most popular protocol for reactive routing is AODV Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector routing. In contrast of reactive routing, Proactive routing algorithm that is also known as table driven protocol are characterized by periodic exchange of topology control messages. Nodes periodically update their routing tables. Control traffic is more dense but constant, and routes are instantly and always available. This is the advantages of this protocol compare to reactive protocol. OLSR Optimized Link State Routing is a link state routing protocol that is one

of the most popular routing protocols for MANET. In the next chapter, I will define what OLSR is and make comparison with AODV based on previous study of others. [10, 18, 19] IV. OLSR OPTIMIZED LINK STATE ROUTING PROTOCOL A. OLSR The Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR) is an IP routing protocol optimized for mobile ad-hoc networks, which can also be used on other wireless ad-hoc networks. OLSR is a proactive link-state routing protocol, which uses Hello and Topology Control (TC) messages to discover and then disseminate link state information throughout the mobile adhoc network. Individual nodes use this topology information to compute next hop destinations for all nodes in the network using shortest hop forwarding paths [3]. The core optimization of OLSR is the flooding mechanism for distributing link state information, which is broadcast in the network by selected nodes called Multipoint Relays (MPR). As a further optimization, only partial link state is diffused in the network. OLSR provides optimal routes (in terms of number of hops) and is particularly suitable for large and dense networks [10]. Specifications of the protocol were first described in an Internet-Draft in February 2000, and were finalized in RFC 3626 [8] in October 2003.In [8] more detailed explanation on how OLSR is work is stated. OLSR is inheriting link state protocol stability of availability of routes due to its proactive nature. This proactive OLSR maintains the routes to all other nodes in the network by periodic change of control message. This give advantages by not introduce delay to send data. The proactive nature of OLSR keep changing its topology table by floods out all nodes to find the best routes. OLSR has all routing information OLSR has the MPR which is Multipoint relay that will be discussed in the next section. B. Multipoint Relay selection and signalling The OLSR backbone for message flooding is composed of Multipoint Relays. Each node must select MPRs from among its symmetric neighbour nodes such that a message emitted by a node and repeated by the MPR nodes will be received by all nodes two hops away. In fact, in order to achieve a networkwide broadcast, a broadcast transmission needs only be repeated by just a subset of the neighbours: this subset is the MPR set of the node. Hence only MPR nodes relay TC, MID, and HNA messages. Figure 5 shows the node in the center, with neighbours and 2-hop neighbours, broadcasting a message. In (a) all nodes retransmit the broadcast, while in (b) only the MPRs of the central node retransmit the broadcast [10].

Fig. 5. Pure flooding and MPR flooding.

The MPR set of a node is computed heuristically. MPR selection is performed based on the 2-hop neighbour set received through the exchange of HELLO messages, and is signaled through the same mechanism. Each node maintains an MPR selector set, describing the set of nodes that have selected it as MPR [10]. V. OLSR IS ONE OF EFFECTIVE ROUTING PROTOCOL FOR MANET

In the highly demand of network, many people and many devices are connected to the network. People with new technology devices tend to connect to network 24/7. Public places like airport, restaurant now provided free wireless access to the internet. With many people access the internet at the same time especially in public places, the network become dense and many nodes or devices is connected to the network. Based on previous study of MANET routing protocol, OLSR obviously works more efficient in dense network. This section will discuss why OLSR is more effective in dense and scattered network based on the results of previous study. A. Advantages of OLSR OLSR is a proactive link state that floods a topology table of its neighbor to all nodes in the network. It then compute optimal forwarding path locally. Based on paper [9], OLSR has many advantages over the AODV the earliest MANET protocol. Basically OLSR implementation is user friendly and as it is flat routing protocol which no needs central administrative system to handle its routing process. For the end to end delay results, OLSR performed better than AODV which it is less average. OLSR has a simple interface that is to integrate with existing operating system, without changing the format of header of IP message only interact with Hosts routing table. This give advantages to OLSR as any devices or any OS can easily work with it. As we know in public places like the airport, there are many kind of devices and people have their own favourite on choosing any OS they prefer to use. This advantage gives OLSR to work more effectively in MANET. OLSR also suit with application which does not allow delays in transmission of data packets because the end to end delay of OLSR is lesser than other MANET routing protocol. In previous study of simulating OLSR routing protocol for wireless network in [22] gives the results that OLSR performed better and effectively. The aim of [22] is to study the performance of OLSR protocol. The study is by simulation using IEEE 802.11 medium access control and physical layer that use several parameters to show the performance of OLSR.

They simulate it by ad hoc network use 10-30 nodes then to larger network of 100 nodes. They simulated on very dense network because OLSR works optimized in that kind of network. The results show that the overhead incurred by the control traffic of OLSR remains small in an IEEE 802.11b network. MPR optimization can save a substantial part of the bandwidth and also improves performance in large networks. This result will overcome the problem which OLSR use a lot of bandwidth than AODV. The performances of OLSR in terms of traffic delivered are very good in normal load conditions however the performance degrades when the network is overloaded. This shows a normal scenario of a network. If the network is too dense and overloaded, any routing protocol would have problem not only OLSR.The effect of the MPR optimization on the route availability and delivered throughput is good. The studied scenarios with the grid and the strip topology show that the MPR optimization still works in the most difficult conditions for this optimization. The effect of the hidden node collision explain the small percentage of route default that we have in small and average size networks when there is no mobility in the network. Mobility is well supported by OLSR and leads to slight performance degradation. They have shown that a significant part of this degradation is due to the retry effect of IEEE 802.11. Even though OLSR might be have some disadvantages such as it require more processing power and lot of bandwidth while flooding its information and updating table, I believe that in our new technology the bandwidth now is much higher and also the devices is provided with more long lasting battery. Hence the performance is better when integrating MPR and OLSR as stated above in previous study that I have read. Therefore this disadvantaged could be surmounted. B. Comparison of OLSR with other routing protocol The previous study [9] give results on performance comparison of OLSR and AODV. This study shows that OLSR reduces control overhead by using MPR to propagate updated link state. But it must maintain routing table for all possible routes in small network. However OLSR work efficiently in dense network, heavy traffic which AODV cannot work effectively on dense network. If we use AODV in dense network, big number of routes will break because of its repeated route discoveries and error reports in network. This shows why I prefer to use OLSR because I believe that usually when many people use the network, the network for sure will become scattered and dense. As a user I will prefer to use OLSR than AODV in public places for an ad hoc network. In other hand, OLSR did not produce additional overhead for finding new routes like AODV. This is because it has kept all the information in it topology table by periodically updates. OLSR did not need to do extra work like AODV to discover new route every time. This will save time and the network will work more effective. OLSR needs more complex storage because it needs to store all information about all nodes but this problem can be overcome by uses more storage on our devices. New devices or personal computer now has provided

more storage at minimum of 250GB and high memory of the RAM too. In conclusion of [9], it stated that OLSR is more efficient in high density network. The best situation OLSR works is between a large number of hosts then the quality metrics easy to expand to the current protocol. The other previous study of comparing OLSR with other protocol is in [21]. In this paper they analyze performance analysis of AODV and OLSR. Overall OLSR with short interval of control message performed better than AODV in urban environment. Their study model is based on Nakagami radio propagation model is used to represent channel fading characteristics of urban scenarios. The metrics that are used to evaluate performance of AODV and OLSR are and the results based on this study are: PDR Packet Delivery Ratio gives the ratio of data packets received at the destination and num of packets generated PDR vs Comm Sessions PDR is more consistent in OLSR. OLSR perform better with short Hello and TC message intervals. It is equipped to cope with rapidly changing and highly dynamic topology of VANET where link often short lived. PDR vs Node Density OLSR performs better than AODV. As n/w & num of nodes increase, proactive protocol runs better than reactive protocols. Average End-to-End delay gives overall delay from source destination nodes End-to-End delay vs Comm Sessions End-to-end delay for AODV is more than OLSR. OLSR is better than AODV. This result shows that OLSR is more effective than AODV is several ways. Based on three papers that I have read [4, 5, 9], I will summarized the comparison between AODV and OLSR routing algorithm. The choice of the two algorithms is due to the fact that these two routing schemes have the dominant role in the ad hoc networks, and the working group IEEE 802.11s is currently focusing on these two protocols. This section will then explain the advantages of OLSR instead of AODV. I will make comparison base on performance and scalability through the resource usage, packet delivery ratio, routing overhead, end to end delay and the throughput for both protocols. Both protocols have it pros and cons. In the experiment of Routing Overhead in static scenarios [4], the results of routing overhead of AODV and OLSR is almost the same. Routing overhead of AODV is increased drastically when the node density has been increased. OLSR on the other side routing overhead is increasing linearly due to increasing of node density. This is because the natures of OLSR for being proactive protocols that will always update the table drive. The route will be discovering periodically. The increasing of routing overhead of AODV is related to the discovery of the new route and from the updates of the usable routes. So in the network with light traffic and low mobility the reactive protocols scales perfectly to the larger networks with low bandwidth and storage overhead. As the undesirable environment for reactive protocols is the network with heavy traffic with large number of destinations with high mobility.

This situation will result that a big number of routes will break resulting repeated route discoveries and error reports in the network [9]. For the end to end delay of both AODV and OLSR is almost the same. AODV end to end delay result is hardy increased but OLSR is linearly increased when the nodes density is increased. However this is only an experiment on static network which AODV has some advantages. In the real dynamic network, OLSR will perform better due to well updates route from its proactive protocol. From the above information, we know that AODV routing over head will increase it needs to find new routes if the network in a dynamic network and in traffic. Hence, OLSR nature is periodically updates its table so it will reduce routing overhead for not finding new routes as reactive protocol AODV does. However this will lead to more bandwidth and resources more than reactive protocols AODV. VI. CONCLUSION In this paper, I have discussed generally about routing algorithm from the basic definition of routing to the OLSR and comparing it with AODV in a mobile ad hoc network. I have chosen OLSR as my writing because it is a new protocol and it is use in MANET which is now increasingly demanding network. I myself as the user of the wireless network and using of smart phone curiously want to learn more about the network layer. People use the network but they do not bother what happen inside the network. Base on this perception I would like to study on MANET and OLSR. After written this paper, I have realized the importance of routing algorithm in a network. Without routing algorithm, the network might be no route which the packets sent might be lost. Link state and distance vector protocol both has its own advantages and disadvantages. I have chosen link state protocols based on it has no count to infinity problems so I think it is better than distance vector protocol. Even though it has some limitations like need higher bandwidth and more memory capacity, I believe in this new world of technology it would not be a big problem. What we need is the fast network access and we will afford to buy more memory. Moreover, all portable devices now come with bigger memory and we can easily add more memory later with the technology of memory card or any memory devices. OLSR and AODV yet is a new protocol and still have lack of security protection. However I have found some articles, they have now studying to enhance security in ad hoc network especially for OLSR protocol [20]. As a conclusion, OLSR protocol is more efficient in network with high density and high traffic based on study and experiment on comparing AODV, DSR and OLSR in Static Scenarios. In my opinion, the OLSR technology is still ongoing technology that could be a lot of improvement by our computer scientists and our engineer. They are now still find the best solution to improve the limitations so that OLSR can be the one of the best MANET routing protocol.

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