Performance comparison of routing protocols for ad hoc networks

Routing protocols for ad hoc networks are currently a hot research topic and when a lot of metrics are jointly considered, some nontrivial conclusions can be drawn. In this work, we make a comparison of link state, AODV and DSR protocols for two different traffic classes, in a selected environment. The classic Dijkstra is also reported as comparison term. As performance metric, packet delivery fraction, throughput, average delay and energy are considered. We show that AODV and DSR perform well when the network load is moderate, while, if the traffic load is heavy, simple link state outperforms the reactive protocols and becomes a good candidate to be used.