Comprehensive OPNET based Scalability Analysis and Performance Evaluation of MANET Routing Protocols

Abstract

A Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of communication and computing devices equipped with communication capabilities in which the nodes communicate with each other without any pre-existing infrastructure. Unlike the infrastructure based networks, there are no BTSs and BSCs in MANETs. The nodes involved in the MANETs, therefore, act as both routers and hosts. The nodes involved in the MANETs, therefore, act as both routers and hosts. The network topology varies dynamically and unpredictably due to mobility of the nodes. The conventional IP based routing protocols are not able to handle the unique characteristics of MANETs. Different protocols that can handle the unique characteristics such as dynamic and unpredictably varying topology have therefore been developed. These protocols have different performance and scalability behaviors in different network operation conditions. It is therefore imperative to analyze their scalability and evaluate their performances with respect to the control variables on which MANET networks are mainly optimized and characterized such as the network size, mobility and traffic type and load. In this paper, the scalability and performance behaviors of AODV, DSR and OLSR are analyzed under scalable network size, mobility speed and FTP traffic loads with respect to average end-to-end delay and throughput. OPNET Modeler 14.5 was used as a simulation tool. The results indicated that there is an overall throughput performance increment with increasing network size and FTP traffic load while the delay performance was decreasing. It was also observed that the mobility scaling has not a significant effect on the performance behavior of the protocols. OLSR performs better than the AODV and DSR in terms of delay while AODV performs better than the other two in terms of throughput in all the scenarios considered.

Keywords: AODV, Delay, DSR, Throughput, FTP, MANET, OLSR