Comparison of MANET routing protocols using a scaled indoor wireless grid

Abstract

Predicting the performance of ad-hoc networking protocols has typically been performed by making use of software based simulation tools. Experimental study and validation of such predictions is vital to obtaining more realistic results, but may not be possible under the constrained environment of network simulators. This paper presents experimental comparisons of routing protocols using a 7 × 7 grid of closely spaced WiFi nodes. It firstly demonstrates the usefulness of the grid in its ability to emulate a real world multi-hop ad-hoc network. It specifically compares hop count, routing traffic overhead, throughput, delay and packet loss for three protocols which are listed by the Internet Engineering Task Force Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANET) working group. These are the Ad-hoc on demand distance vector routing protocol (AODV), the optimized link state routing protocol (OLSR) and the dynamic MANET on demand routing protocol (DYMO).