Comparative Performance Study of Standardized Ad-Hoc Routing Protocols and OSPF-MCDS

Abstract

The development of ubiquitous mobile computing devices has fueled the need for dynamic reconfigurable networks. Mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) routing protocols facilitate the creation of such networks, without centralized infrastructure. One of the challenges in the study of MANET routing protocols is the evaluation and design of an effective routing protocol that works at low data rates and responds to dynamic changes in network topology due to node mobility. Several routing protocols have been standardized by the Internet Engineering Task force (IETF) to address ad-hoc routing requirements. The performance of these protocols are investigated in detail in this thesis.

A relatively new approach to ad-hoc routing using the concept of a Minimal Connected Dominating Set (MCDS) has been developed at Virginia Tech. The OSPF-MCDS routing protocol is a modified version of the traditional Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) wired routing protocol which incorporates the MCDS framework. Enhancements to the protocol implementation to support multiple-interface routing are presented in this thesis. The protocol implementation was also ported to ns-2, a popular open source network simulator.

Several enhancements to the implementation and simulation model are discussed along with simulation specifics. New scenario visualization tools for mobility pattern generation and analysis are described. A generic framework and tutorial for developing new ad-hoc routing simulation models are also presented. The simulation model developed is used to compare the performance characteristics of OSPF-MCDS to three different standardized MANET routing protocols. Simulation results presented here show that no single protocol can achieve optimal performance for all mobility cases. Different observations from simulation experiments are summarized that support the likely candidate for different mobility scenarios.