On the Overheads of Ad Hoc Routing Schemes

The “first wave” of wireless ad hoc routing protocols was heavily influenced by the routing algorithms used in wired networks. However, their overheads due to topology changes and the implicit restriction to point-to-point control messages meant that extensive effort had to be expended in “fixing” them to fit the intricacies and opportunities offered by wireless environments. In this paper, we analyze and compare the most widely used routing protocols in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). In particular, we consider routing and control overheads, storage requirements, and network setup costs of these protocols to see how well they fit in MANETs with nodes that have scarce resources.