Improving performance of a real ad-hoc network by tuning OLSR parameters

A key element for MANET performance is the routing protocol. Surprisingly, little effort has been devoted up to now to analyzing the impact of routing protocol parameter settings on MANET performance. We define and study in detail the route change latency (RCL) after link failures, a critical performance metric in a non-static ad-hoc scenario, and its dependence on routing protocol parameter settings and implementation issues using OLSR. We experiment with a set of OLSR settings in a real network environment and derive its potential effect in a generic situation, showing that end-to-end connectivity can be enhanced using different parameter settings from the default ones.