Component based modeling of routing protocols for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Routing protocols perform several functionalities and can be considered as complex software systems. The design and performance analysis of these protocols is difficult and complex and most of them are not adaptable to changes of the environment. In this paper, we present a component based methodology for modeling mobile ad hoc routing protocols. Componentization is used for modeling and analysis of complex systems, because it introduces modularity in protocol design and reusability of designed components across protocols of the same class. We define the fundamental components of the routing protocols based on their functionalities and investigate their interactions. More specifically, we present an initial investigation of the influence of the separate components on the performance metrics of the protocol, such as delay, packet delivery ratio and routing overhead. Proactive routing protocols are being examined and we consider OLSR and DSDV as use cases for our methodology. In addition, we propose an adaptive reusable modification in the Routing Metrics component of OLSR that lead to better overall performance in energy constrained environments.