On the performance of geographical routing in the presence of localization errors [ad hoc network applications]

In this paper, a detailed study of the performance of geographic routing protocols in the presence of localization errors is carried out. Both analytical and simulation results illustrate the major impact or localization errors on the protocol goodput and route discovery energy. The performance metrics observed were the packet delivery ratio and the power consumed at a node for routing. It is shown that significant performance deterioration occurs with location errors as low as 20% of a node´s radio range with no other obstacles in the network. To counteract this degradation, an enhancement is proposed that increases the error tolerance to about 40% radio range and in addition improves the performance consistently for any location error. Furthermore, the effect of obstacles in conjunction with location errors on the routing performance is also investigated.