Ad-hoc Routing in Low Bandwidth Environments

Abstract: AODV (Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector routing), DSDV (Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector routing), DSR (Dynamic Source Routing), and OLSR (Optimized Link State Routing protocol) are protocols used for routing management in ad-hoc networks. In a specific sensor data network application, nodes need information about the network topology, i.e. the network nodes and the connections between them. OLSR provides nodes with this information, while the three other protocols do not. This thesis investigates how OLSR compares to AODV, DSDV,and DSR in a low bandwidth network scenario. Two cases were analyzed: One where AODV, DSDV, and DSR distribute topology information in the application layer and one where they do not. The sensor data application was not finished when this thesis project started. Instead, a simplified traffic model of the application was used. In addition to a protocol comparison, this thesis investigates if traffic generated from the model results in high rates of packet loss, assuming low bandwidth conditions. The ns-3 network simulator was used for these investigations. This thesis shows that AODV outperforms the three other protocols regardless of whether AODV, DSDV, and DSR distribute topology information in the application layer or not. Furthermore, it is shown that running the traffic model in the low bandwidth environment is not possible without high rates of packet loss.