Impact of physical propagation environment on ad hoc network routing protocols

In this paper, we analyze the impact of physical propagation model on the performance of ad-hoc network routing protocols. The impact of different propagation environments on a typical routing protocol such as OLSR is presented through simulations. A log-distance path loss model is used to model two different environments: open_environment characterized by open area and city_environment characterized by urban environment. We will show that the network throughput degrades and the average delay and the routing packet overhead significantly increase in a higher attenuating environment such as the city_environment.