Performance Comparison and Analysis of Table-Driven and On-Demand Routing Protocols for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

Mobile ad hoc network is a collection of mobile nodes communicating through wireless channels without any existing network infrastructure or centralized administration. Because of the limited transmission range of wireless network interfaces, multiple "hops" may be needed to exchange data across the network. In order to facilitate communication within the network, a routing protocol is used to discover routes between nodes. The primary goal of such an ad hoc network routing protocol is correct and efficient route establishment between a pair of nodes so that messages may be delivered in a timely manner. Route construction should be done with a minimum of overhead and bandwidth consumption. This paper examines two routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks– the Destination Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV), the tabledriven protocol and the Ad hoc OnDemand Distance Vector routing (AODV), an On –Demand protocol and evaluates both protocols based on packet delivery fraction, normalized routing load, average delay and throughput while varying number of nodes, speed and pause time. Keywords—AODV, DSDV, MANET, relative performance