SpringerLink - Journal Article

Comparison of MANET Routing Protocols Using a Scaled Indoor Wireless Grid

David Johnson¹ and Albert Lysko¹

(1)	Meraka Institute, P.O. Box 395, Pretoria, 0001, South Africa

Received: 15 June 2007 Accepted: 11 March 2008 Published online: 16 April 2008

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).

Keywords ad-hoc networks - IEEE 802.11 standard - wireless grid test bed

David Johnson
Email: djohnson@csir.co.za

David Johnson was born in South Africa in 1972. He received his B.Sc. (Electronic Engineering) at Cape Town University in South Africa. He is currently completing his M. Eng in Computer Engineering at the University of Pretoria in South Africa on scaled wireless grids for benchmarking ad hoc routing protocols. David Johnson has been working in the field of wireless mesh networks for the past 4 years and in telecommunications engineering for the past 6 years. He currently leads a research team which is addressing the fundamental research questions around wireless mesh networks for rural connectivity at the Meraka Institute, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa. His current personal interests are computational intelligence, benchmarking ad hoc networking protocols using outdoor and indoor scaled test beds, graph theory, and gateway location mechanisms in mesh networks. He is an active participant in fora such as the “Wireless World Research Forum” and the “Association for Progressive Communications” which looks at mechanisms to build sustainable telecommunications infrastructure in Africa.

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Albert Lysko (M’01) was born in Leningrad, USSR in 1974. He received his B. Sc. in Technical Physics and M. Sc. in Radiophysics in 1996 and 1998, respectively, both from Saint-Petersburg State Technical University in Russia. During his studies for B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees, he was with the Ground Penetrating Radar Laboratory, Saint-Petersburg, Russia, dealing with non-destructive testing methods for characterization of materials at microwave frequencies. Albert Lysko is completing his Dr. Ing. (PhD). at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway, where he also co-realized a system for 3D antenna and radar measurements. Currently, he is working at the Meraka Institute, CSIR, South Africa. His research interests are in smart antennas for wireless networking, as well as in numerical methods for electromagnetic design and analysis, in ultra-wide bandwidth antennas, and antenna and radar measurements. A. Lysko is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and also a former member of the Antenna Measurement Techniques Association.

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Comparison of MANET Routing Protocols Using a Scaled Indoor Wireless Grid

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