Assessing the performance of AODV, DYMO, and OLSR routing protocols in the context of larger-scale denser MANETs

Assessing the performance of mobile ad hoc network (MANET) routing protocols has typically been done within the context of networks with < 100 nodes/km2 where 150m to 200m per-node communication ranges are used. In such networks 1 to 2 hop communications dominate. A basic question, therefore, is how do these protocols perform in denser networks where multi-hop communications are innately required? Through the simulation study of a larger-scale denser 360-node multi-hop network, this work shows that, contrary to prior smaller-scale lower density MANET studies, AODV and DYMO outperforms OLSR within multi-hop networks. To the authors' knowledge this deficiency within OLSR has not been previously reported. These issues are of interest as the wide-scale adoption of smartphones have provided a pragmatic deployment platform for such larger-scale denser MANETs, particularly within urban cores and for non-cellular based network services.