Location and Non-Location Based Ad-Hoc Routing Protocols under Various Mobility Models: A Comparative Study

In this paper we present a performance evaluation study of three fundamentally different ad-hoc routing protocols using different mobility patterns with special focus on three well-known performance metrics, namely the throughput, the end-to-end delay, and the packet loss. Simulations study is carried out in a standard simulator that provides the scalable simulation environment for wireless network systems. The comparative study entails three different protocols, namely the Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), the Location-Aided Routing (LAR), and the Wireless Routing Protocol (WRP). The mobility models employed in this study include the Random Way Point (RWP) mobility model, the Reference Point Group (RPG) mobility model, the Manhattan Grid (MG) mobility model, and the Gauss-Markov (GM) mobility model. The results shows that the performance metrics of ad-hoc routing protocols vary significantly with the node mobility pattern. It confirms that the speed, with which the node changes its position, considerably affect the network performance. Furthermore, it has been observed that a location-based routing protocol shows quite a good performance with various mobility patterns.