A Performance Comparison of

Multi-Hop Wireless Ad Hoc

Network Routing Protocols
Josh Broch
David A. Maltz
David B. Johnson
Yih-Chun Hu
Jorjeta Jetcheva
http://www.monarch.cmu.edu/ (subsequently moved to rice univ.)
Presented at MobiCom 98
Presented by Chris Dion

Agenda

Introduction
Simulation Environment
Routing Protocols Studied
Methodology
Simulation Results
Observations
Related Work/Conclusions

Ad Hoc Networks
Each mobile node operates as a router as
well as a host.
May have Multi-hop paths through the
network.
Examples include students using laptops,
soldiers relaying information, disaster
relief personnel coordinating efforts.

What can we measure?

As of this paper (1998), little was known
about performance of ad-hoc protocols
4 protocols will be studied and compared
against
Ns-2 simulator was extended to
realistically simulate ad hoc networks

How do we simulate moving

networks?
1. Accurately modeling radio waves

Use 1/r2 (r = distance between antennas) and 1/r4 for

distances outside reference

2. Medium Access Control

Use Distributed Coordination Function (DCF)

3. Address Resolution

Uses RFC 826 ARP

4. Packet Buffering

50 Packet TX buffer, drop-tail

4 Protocols to Simulate
DSDV (Destination-Sequenced Distance
Vector)
TORA (Temporally-Ordered Routing
Algorithm)
DSR (Dynamic Source Routing)
AODV (Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance
Vector)
Some improvements were made to all protocols

Destination-Sequenced Distance
Vector (DSDV)
Presented SIGCOMM 94 by Perkins and
Bhagwat
Each node contains a routing table for each hop
with sequence number and metric
Each node advertises a monotonically
increasing even sequence number
Lowest sequence number is the more favorable
route.
Guaranteed Loop-freedom

DSDV Example

Updated Forwarding Table:

Temporally-Ordered Routing
Algorithm (TORA)
Presented INFOCOM 97 by Park and
Carson
Designed to Minimize overhead and
discover routes on demand
Think about it as water flowing through
tubes on its way to a destination
Node broadcasts a Query packet,
recipient broadcasts an Update packet
Uses IMEP as transport

Route Creation Example

Link Failure without reaction

Re-establishing routes

Dynamic Source Routing (DSR)

Published in Mobile Computing, 96 by
Johnson and Maltz (sound familiar?)
Uses source rather then hop-by-hop
routing, each packet contains list of nodes
for packet to pass through.
No need for up-to-date routing information,
more importantly eliminates need for
periodic route advertisement

DSR (cont)
Route Discovery
Flood route request message
Request answered with route reply by:
Destination
Optimized if some other node that knows the way

Route Maintenance
If 2 nodes listed next to each other in route move out
of range
Return route error message to sender
Sender can either use another route in its cache or invoke
Route Discovery Again.

Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance

Vector (AODV)
Presented as Internet-Draft (Currently on
Version 12), Perkins and Royer, 1997
Takes the basic on-demand mechanism of
Route Discovery and Maintenance from
DSR, plus hop-by-hop routing, etc from
DSDV
Hello messages are passed between
routes every second, Failure to receive 3
consecutive means link is taken down

AODV Example
Route Request

Route Reply

Test Methodology
All tests based on:

50 wireless nodes
Rectangular flat place, 1500m x 300m
900 seconds of simulated run time
7 Different Pause Times, which is how long each
node remains stationary:
0,30,60,120,300,600, and 900 (no motion)

10 movement patterns for each pause time, 70 total

20 m/s Max node speed (10 avg.), also used 1m/s

Packet Size/Amount/rate
Rate is equivalent to the number of sources,
decided to be fixed at 4 pps at each of 3 different
# of sources (10,20,30)
Note about Packet size:
At 1024 byte packets congestion became an issue
Used 64 byte packets to more accurately measure
network performance

Had simulator measure distances between

sender and destination nodes (shortest
distance), and labeled packet with information

What do we measure?
Packet delivery ratio: Application layer packets
originated at source to received packets
Characterizes completeness and correctness of the
routing protocol

Routing overhead: Total # of packets sent during

transmission
Scalability

Path optimality: Difference between number of hops

a packet took and the shortest path measured
Measures the ability to efficiently use network resources.

Packet Delivery vs. Pause time (20 sessions)

Routing OH vs. pause time (20 sessions)

Path Optimality

Change of Speed (20m/s -> 1ms)

Additional Observations
OH Bytes vs. Packets?
DSR clearly wins in bytes for the buck, but
does it matter?

DSDV vs. DSDV-SQ

Sends triggered update for each new seq.
number
DSDV requires that they only be sent when a
new metric is received for a destination
Link breakages are not detected as quickly

Conclusions?
Detailed packet-level simulation of 4
recent routing protocols
DSDV performs predictably, not good
when mobility increases
TORA uses large amounts of OH,
delivered packets well
DSR was good at all speeds and rates!
AODV does almost as good, but more OH
makes it more expensive then DSR

Some Examples of Newer

Protocols since this paper
Periodic based updates (DSDV-like)
Fisheye, 1999
GSR (Global State Routing), 1998

On demand based updates

ABR (Associativity-Based Routing)
ZRP (Zone Routing Protocol)
PAR (Power-Aware Routing)