Impact of Mobility Models on the Performance of Routing Protocols in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

Mobile ad hoc network consists of wireless mobile nodes, where nodes convey message
to each other without any pre-established infrastructure or centralized control. The
wireless ad hoc network eradicates the complications which may arise while setting up
the infrastructure. The mobility model is crucial when evaluating routing protocols
exhibition in mobile ad hoc networks. Two parameters are very important when dealing
with mobility behavior of mobile nodes: pause time and maximum speed. In this paper,
we investigate the effect of mobility model on state of art proactive and reactive routing
protocols for mobile ad hoc networks. The Reference Point Group Mobility model and
the Random Way Point Mobility model represent the group and an entity mobility
model used in this simulation to compare and analyze the performance of the routing
protocols. In this study the performance analysis and comparison of the routing
protocols under different mobility scenarios are evaluated in Network Simulator 2. Four
important performance metrics of ad hoc networks including average end-to-end delay,
packet delivery ratio, normalized routing load or overhead and average number of hops
are considered. Based on the empirical study, both propagation models cause different
impact on the AODV and DSDV routing protocol. Where, AODV performs better with
the RPGM than the RWPM with respect to end-to end-delay, normalized routing load
and average number of hops. However, in delivery ratio AODV performs better with the
RWPM than the RPGM. On the other hand, AODV and DSDV protocols have similar
results in delivery ratio and average number of hops and DSDV performed better than
AODV in normalized routing and end-to-end delay. Finally, it can be concluded that no
protocol significantly outperforms the other in all scenarios and matrics considered.