Page 2 Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2865 Edited by G. Goos ...

Evaluation of the AODV and DSR RoutingProtocols Using the MERIT ToolPriya Narayan and Violet R. Syrotiuk ⋆Computer Science & Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-5406Abstract. Selecting the most appropriate routing protocol for a givenset of conditions in a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) remains difficult.While the quantitative performance metrics are helpful in the selection,the problem is that the metrics of the protocols under consideration begenerated by the same simulator in order to be comparable. The MERITframework proposes to compare a routing protocol to a theoretical optimumrather than to a competing protocol. The goal is to achieve animplementation independent, scalable comparison methodology for protocols.In this paper we evaluate the DSR and AODV routing protocols inthe MERIT tool. Our results agree with performance studies comparingthese two protocols, validating the MERIT methodology.1 IntroductionRouting is a fundamental problem in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). Whatcontributes to the difficulty of the problem is that a MANET is a collection ofmobile wireless nodes with no supporting infrastructure. As a result, routinginformation must be computed in a distributed manner that is responsive to thecontinuously changing topology induced by node mobility.Over the past few decades, a considerable number of routing protocols havebeen proposed for MANETs (also called packet radio networks or multi-hopnetworks in earlier work). More recently, more than a dozen protocols have beendocumented in the form of Internet-Drafts in the Internet Engineering TaskForce (IETF) MANET working group [13]. Given the large choice of protocols,each with its own strengths, it remains a difficult problem to select the one mostappropriate for a given set of network conditions.Routing protocols for MANETs are traditionally evaluated by simulationsince few testbeds exist. There is general consensus on the quantitative metricsto use for comparing protocols, namely end-to-end throughput and delay,route acquisition time, percentage of out-of-order delivery, and the efficiency ofthe protocol in terms of control traffic overhead [4]. It has been shown that theresults from different simulation platforms cannot be directly compared. Specifically,factors such as the implementation of the physical layer not only affectthe absolute performance of a routing protocol, it can change the relative rankingamong protocols for the same scenario because its impact on the differentprotocols is not uniform [18].⋆ This work was supported in part by NSF grant ANI-0220001.S. Pierre, M. Barbeau, and E. Kranakis (Eds.): ADHOC-NOW 2003, LNCS 2865, pp. 25–36, 2003.c○ Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003