Node Density Effects on Reactive Routing Protocols for Mobile Ad Hoc Wireless Networks

The study conducted in this paper evaluates the performance of on-demand mobile ad hoc wireless network protocols under varying node densities in a large network. The focus in this study centers on the relationship between the mobility, density and connectivity of ad hoc wireless nodes. Ad hoc wireless node density is often discussed on a single group subnets of nodes. In this study a scenario is proposed to evaluate the ad hoc wireless nodes communicating between different node sub with different densities. A simulation is conducted using the two prominent on demand routing protocol for ad hoc networks namely DSR and AODV. In the simulation each protocol is given 2 different scenarios in terms of node location. The first scenario is a normal ad hoc wireless simulation scenario. The second scenario contains nodes that are partitioned into 7 areas where respective areas have their node density and connection probability. The objective of this study is to look at how on demand ad hoc wireless routing protocols react to environments with non uniform node densities and to seek and understanding for future improvement.