Analysis of the Dynamic Source Routing Protocol for Ad Hoc Networks
Rajendra V. Boppana, Anket Mathur · 2005
The Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol is a simple and robust routing protocol designed for use in multi-hop wireless ad-hoc networks of mobile nodes. Several of the optimizations proposed in the protocol tend to hurt the performance, especially in the case of high node mobility and low traffic load. This issue has been studied extensively, and DSR is shown to perform better with certain optimizations turned off. In this paper, we show that DSR's performance is unsatisfactory even with these modifications. We suggest three simple and intuitive changes to the routing protocol. Using simulations, we show that the new techniques provide significant performance improvements for various network densities and traffic loads. To illustrate the relative significance of the proposed changes, traffic load and network density on the overall performance, we present 2 k factorial analyses of the simulation data. Based on the statistical analysis, we show that limiting replies by destination is the most beneficial change to the routing protocol and that network density has significant impact on performance in uncongested networks.