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A comparative study of MANET

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Soha S. Zaghloul

The Third International Conference on e-Technologies and Networks for Development (ICeND2014)

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 A Comparative Study of MANET Routing Protocols

Mona N. Alslaim Haifaa A. Alaqel Soha S. Zaghloul

Department of Computer Science
King Saud University
Riyadh, KSA

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Abstract— Mobile Ad-Hoc Network (MANET) is a collection with an access point, such as a base station, which in
of wireless mobile hosts forming a temporary network without turn is connected to a fixed network infrastructure.
 Infrastructure-less: MANETs belong to this type of
the aid of any stand-alone infrastructure or centralized
administration. Due to the mobility of the nodes in the network,
these nodes are self-organizing and self-configuring. Not only communication. It consists of a collection of wireless
they act as hosts, but also they function as routers. They direct dynamic nodes that form a network. The nodes
data to or from other nodes in the network. In MANETs, routing exchange information without using any pre-existing
protocols are necessary to find specific paths between the source fixed network infrastructure.
and the destination. The primary goal of any ad-hoc network
routing protocol is to meet the challenges of the dynamically In the infrastructure-less approach, all nodes cooperate with
changing topology. Therefore, an efficient route between any two each other to forward packets; thus extending the limited
nodes with minimum routing overhead and bandwidth transmission range of each node’s wireless network interface.
consumption should be established. The design of these routing Each node may forward traffic unrelated to its own use, and
protocols is challenging due to the mobility and the dynamic therefore be a router [2]. Each node in a MANET is free to
nature of the mobile ad-hoc networks. MANET routing protocols move independently in any direction, and therefore changes its
are categorized into two types: proactive and reactive. In this links to other devices frequently. Due to the dynamic nature of
paper, the MANET characteristics and challenges are the MANETs, routing protocols should be efficient enough to
highlighted. In addition, the previously mentioned categories of satisfy the network’s requirements.
routing protocols, proactive and reactive, are explored.
Moreover, a comparison is conducted between three protocols; This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 explores the
namely, DSDV, DSR and AODV in terms of both properties and background about MANETs. Section 3 enumerates MANETs
performance. Finally, a critical analysis is performed on some applications. Section 4 exposes the challenges faced in
papers that discussed routing in MANET. MANETs. Section 5 details the MANETs routing protocols.
Section 6 conducts a comparative study between the routing
Keywords— MANET; Proactive Routing; Reactive Routing; protocols in terms of their characteristics and performance.
DSDV; DSR; AODV Finally, Section 7 concludes the paper.

I. INTRODUCTION II. BACKGROUND

Recently, wireless networks and mobile devices gained a A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is a self-configuring
wide popularity. This led to the significant increase of mobile infrastructure-less network of mobile devices connected by
ad-hoc networks in the last few years. Accordingly, MANETs wireless communication. They are characterized by the
became one of the most prevalent areas in research. The ability following criteria:
 Dynamic topology: Nodes are free to move arbitrarily,
of this type of networks to operate anywhere and anytime made
it adaptable in many new applications.
meaning that the network topology, which is typically
All manuscripts must be in English. These guidelines multi-hop, may change randomly and rapidly at
include complete descriptions of the fonts, spacing, and related unpredictable times [3].
 Bandwidth-limited and fluctuating capacity links:
information for producing your proceedings manuscripts.
Please follow them and if you have any questions, direct them
to the production editor in charge of your proceedings (see wireless links, by nature, have substantially lower
author-kit message for contact info). capacity as compared to their hardwired counterparts.
Besides the throughput of a wireless communication in
In general, there are two communication approaches for a real environment is often much lower than a radio’s
wireless mobile nodes. Here they are: maximum transmission rate. This is due to the existence
 Infrastructure-based wireless mobile networks: these of multiple negative effects such as fading, noise and
are based on the cellular concept. They rely on a good interference conditions [2].
infrastructure support. Mobile devices communicate
  Low power and resource: Mobile nodes are likely to problems, because of the limited wireless transmission
rely on batteries. Therefore, the primary design criteria range, the broadcast nature of the wireless medium (e.g.
should be energy conservation [4]. hidden terminal problem), mobility -induced packet
 Constrained physical security: mobile wireless
losses, and data transmission errors [1].
networks are more likely to be vulnerable to physical  Quality of Service (QoS): Providing different quality of
security threats than are fixed cable nets. For example, service levels in a constantly changing environment
there is an increased possibility of eavesdropping, imposes a further challenge [3].
spoofing, and denial of service attack that should be
carefully considered [2]. V. ROUTING PROTOCOLS
 Decentralized network control: the decentralized nature Several MANETs routing protocols are proposed in the
of network’s control in MANETs supports extra literature. These may be broadly classified into two types as
robustness against the single points of failure found in [8]:
 Table Driven or Proactive Protocols: In this type of
centralized approaches [2].
protocols, each node maintains one or more tables
III. MANETS APPLICATIONS containing routing information to every other node in
Due to their flexible nature, MANETs are used in many the network. All nodes keep on updating their routing
applications such as [4]: tables to maintain the latest view of the network. DSDV
 Sensor Networks for environmental monitoring
is an example of such protocols.
 On Demand or Reactive Protocols: In this type of
 Rescue operations in remote areas protocols, routes are created only when required. In
 Remote construction sites other words, when a packet is to be transmitted from a

 Emergency operations
source to a destination, it invokes the route discovery
procedure. The route remains valid till either the
 Military battlefield
destination is reached or the route is no longer needed.

 Civilian environments
Some of the existing on demand routing protocols are:
DSR and AODV.
 Law enforcement activities  This paper emphasizes on DSDV, DSR and AODV
 Commercial projects
routing protocols since it was proven that these are the
best suited for Ad Hoc Networks. The next subsections
describe the basic features of these protocols.
IV. CHALLENGES IN MANETS
 Routing: since the topology of the network is constantly A. Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector (DSDV)
changing, the issue of routing packets between any pair The Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector (DSDV)
of nodes becomes a challenging task. Furthermore, routing algorithm is an improvement of the classical Bellman-
multicast routing even imposes a bigger challenge Ford routing algorithm. The basic idea is that each mobile
because the multicast tree is no longer static. This is due station maintains a routing table that contains all available
to the random movement of nodes within the network. destinations, the corresponding number of hops to reach that
Routes between nodes may potentially contain multiple destination and a sequence number assigned by the destination
hops. Therefore, the design of the protocol becomes node. The sequence number is used to distinguish stale routes
even more complicated [1]. from new ones and thus avoid the formation of loops. So, the
 Power Consumption: the routing protocol should take
update is both time-driven and event-driven. The routing table
may be updated either by a full dump or by an incremental
into consideration the limited power resource of the update. A full dump sends the whole routing table to the
mobile wireless nodes. In other words, the routing neighbors. Therefore, many packets may be spanned in such
protocol should be efficient and energy-aware [2]. update mode. On the other hand, only the entries that have a
 Internetworking: a MANET may be interconnected metric change since the last update are broadcast. Accordingly,
with a fixed network. Therefore, the routing protocol such update must fit in a packet. If there is space in the
should take into consideration the coexistence of other incremental update packet then those entries may be included
routing protocols designed for fixed networks [3]. whose sequence number has changed. When the network is

 Security and Reliability: In addition to the common

relatively stable, incremental updates are sent to avoid extra
traffic and full dump are relatively infrequent. In a fast-
vulnerabilities of wireless connection, an ad hoc changing network, incremental packets can grow big so full
network has its particular security problems due to dumps will be more frequent [6].
nasty neighbor relaying packets. The feature of
distributed operation requires different schemes of
authentication and key management. Furthermore,
wireless link characteristics introduce reliability
  As DSDV, a big overhead is imposed on the routing
 Guarantees no loop.
1) DSDV Advantages
protocol due to the large number of control overheads.
 Guarantees the freshness of routing information in the
These are necessary to send route reply messages for
single route request.
routing table by using the sequence number.
 Avoids extra traffic by using incremental updates. C. Dynamic Source Routing (DSR)
 Maintains the best path only to every destination.
Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) is an Ad Hoc routing
protocol based on the theory of source-based routing rather
Therefore, the space of the routing table is reduced.
than table-based. This protocol is source initiated. This is

 The required periodic updates messages impose a big

2) DSDV Limitations particularly designed for use in multi hop wireless ad hoc
networks of mobile nodes. Basically, DSR protocol does not
overhead. Therefore, it is not effective in large need any existing network infrastructure or administration.
networks. This allows the network to be completely self-organizing and

 Does not support multipath routing.

self-configuring. This protocol is composed of two essential
parts of route discovery and route maintenance. Each node
 Waste of bandwidth due to the needless advertising of
maintains a cache to store recently discovered paths. When a
node needs to send a packet to another node, it first checks its
routing information even if there is no change in the
entry in the cache. If it is there, then it uses that path to transmit
network topology.
the packet. In addition, it appends the source address to the
packet. If the entry does not exist in the cache, or it is expired
B. Ad Hoc on-Demand Distance Vector Routing (AODV) (because of being idle for a long time), then the sender
AODV uses traditional routing tables, one entry per broadcasts a route request packet to all neighbors asking for a
destination. This is in contrast to DSR, which can maintain path to the destination. The sender will be waiting till the route
multiple route cache entries for each destination. Without is discovered. During the waiting time, the sender can perform
source routing, AODV relies on routing table entries to other tasks such as sending/forwarding other packets. As soon
propagate an RREP back to the source and, subsequently, to as the route request packet reaches any of the neighboring
route data packets to the destination. AODV uses sequence nodes, the latter looks for the destination in its corresponding
numbers maintained at each destination to determine freshness cache. If the route information to the destination is known, then
of routing information and to prevent routing loops. All routing the neighbor node sends back a route reply packet to the
packets carry these sequence numbers. An important feature of sending node; otherwise the same route request packet is
AODV is the maintenance of timer-based states in each node, broadcast.
regarding utilization of individual routing table entries. A
routing table entry is expired if not used recently. A set of When the route is discovered, the sender starts transmission
predecessor nodes is maintained for each routing table entry, on the discovered route. Also, an entry is created in the
indicating the set of neighboring nodes which use that entry to corresponding cache. In addition, the node maintains the
route data packets. These nodes are notified with RERR entry’s age information in order to decide whether the cache
packets when the next-hop link breaks. Each predecessor node, line is fresh or not. When any intermediate node receives a data
in turn, forwards the RERR to its own set of predecessors, thus packet, it first checks whether the packet is meant for itself or
effectively erasing all routes using the broken link. In contrast not. If it is meant for itself (i.e. the intermediate node is the
to DSR, RERR packets in AODV are intended to inform all destination), the packet is received; otherwise, the same packet
sources using a link when a failure occurs. Route error is forwarded using the path appended to the data packet.
propagation in AODV can be visualized conceptually as a tree Since in Ad hoc network, any link might fail anytime.
whose root is the node at the point of failure and all sources Therefore, the route maintenance process constantly monitors
using the failed link as the leaves [5][6]. the status of the network. A notification is sent to the relevant
nodes in case of any failure in the path. Accordingly, the nodes
 Very effective in highly dynamic networks.
1) AODV Advantages:
change the entries of their route cache [7].

 Since the information of stale routes expire after a

 By using the cache, the route discovery overhead is
1) DSR Advantages:
specific time, AODV requires less space as compared to
reduced.
 Supports multipath routing.
other reactive routing protocols.
 Supports multicasting.
 Does not require any periodic beaconing or hello
 AODV lacks an efficient route maintenance technique
2) AODV Limitations:
message exchanges.

 Not effective in large networks.

since routing information is always obtained on 2) DSR Limitations:
demand.
 Like DSR, AODV suffers from high route discovery  Packet size keeps on increasing with route length
latency. because of source routing.
  Suffers from the high latency encountered in route  Average end-to-end delay: DSDV gives the highest
discovery. average end-to-end delay of packets delivery as
compared to both DSR and AODV.
VI. COMPARATIVE STUDY  Packet Loss (or dropped): Packet loss is defined as the
This section provides a comparative analysis of routing difference between the number of packets sent by the
protocols previously described. Comparison is conducted in source and received by the sink. The routing protocol
terms of both characteristics and performance. The metrics forwards the packet to destination if a valid route is
used in the performance analysis include the following [9]: known; otherwise, the packet is buffered until a route is
 Packet Delivery Ratio: this is the ratio of the data
available. If the buffer is full the packet is dropped.
Also, if the buffered packet exceeds a threshold value of
packets delivered to the destinations to the total number time in the buffer without being sent, it is dropped. DSR
of packets. demonstrates the least number of lost packets as
 Average end-to-end Delay: this is the average amount compared to both AODV and DSDV. On the other
of time taken by a packet to go from a source to a hand, DSDV shows the maximum packet losses in case
destination. This includes all possible delays caused by of varying speed. AODV has more packet losses than
buffering during route discovery latency, queuing at the DSDV when the number of nodes is greater than 50.
interface queue, retransmission delays at the MAC and  Routing overhead: This is the ratio of the total number
propagation and transfer times. of the routing packets to the number of data packets as
 Packet Loss: this is the measure of the number of calculated at the MAC layer. DSR has a lowest routing
packets dropped by the routers. load as compared to both AODV and DSD. This is

 Routing Overhead: this is the ratio of the total number

explained by the followed aggressive caching strategy
to reply to all requests reaching the destination from a
of the routing packets transmitted to data packets. single request cycle. On the other hand, AODV suffers
from a lot of routing control packets. Therefore, the
A. Analysis of Characteristics routing overhead is higher than the other two protocols.
Table 1 summarizes the differences between the most DSDV routing overhead is negligible. However, it
important characteristics of the three routing protocols. suffers from less route stability as compared to AODV.

B. Analysis of Performance VII. CONCLUSION

 Packet delivery ratio: in case of low mobility, all three In this paper, a comparative study is conducted between on-
protocols deliver a large percentage of the packets. This demand (DSR and AODV) and table-driven (DSDV) routing
may reach 100% when there is no node motion. Under protocols in terms of both characteristics and performance. The
high mobility simulation, Both AODV and DSR performance metrics used are the packet delivery ratio, the
perform better than DSDV [10]. average end-to-end delay, the number of dropped packets, the
 Number of nodes in the network should also be taken
routing overhead, the nodes mobility and the increasing
number of nodes in the network.
into consideration. DSR performance is indirectly
proportional to the number of nodes in the network. The As a conclusion, DSR outperforms the other two protocols
upper limit of DSR is two hundred nodes. DSDV in ordinary situations. However, DSDV is better in more
outperforms both DSR and AODV with larger number stressful situations. Therefore, practically speaking, it is better
of nodes. On the other hand, the performance of AODV to use DSDV as it has the best performance in situation similar
is consistently uniform. to the real life situation.

TABLE I. ROUTING PROTOCOLS CHARACTERISTICS

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