A comparison of IP header compression schemes in MANETs

The desire to increase bandwidth efficiency in an all-IP infrastructure in the presence of reduced spectrum and increasing demand for connectivity has led to several developments in IP header compression techniques. In recent years, there have been several IP header compression schemes developed in industry specifically for wireless networks including RObust Header Compression (ROHC) and IP Header Compression (RFC 2507). ROHC and IPHC (RFC 2507) have been adopted by several commercial cellular networks and military networks as one of the techniques for implementing IP header compression. In addition to ROHC and IPHC which were designed primarily for one-hop wireless networks, MANET IP Header Compression (MIPHC) was defined to help bridge the gap to multi-hop MANETs. To evaluate the effectiveness of IP header compression schemes on multi-hop MANETs and other networks, we implement simulation models of ROHC, IPHC, and MIPHC and evaluate their performance under various conditions in a mobile ad hoc network. The results show that although ROHC was designed specifically for one-hop cellular networks and context is required to be maintained per hop per IP flow, its performance is fairly good in multi-hop MANETs.