Impact of ZRP Zone Radius Value on Wireless Network Performance

In this paper, we highlight the impact of the routing load on the performance of ad hoc wireless networks. Specifically, we analyze Zone Routing Protocol (ZRP) routing load and the impact of zone radius value on this protocol performance. First, we show that performance parameters curves such as routing overhead, Packet Delivery Ratio and End-to-End Delay don’t evaluate monotonously according to zone radius value. In our test context, we note optimal values for routing overhead and Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) when R = 3. For delay, minimal values are observed when R = 1 and R = 4. Second, we study this hybrid protocol routing overhead according to network density and compare it to pure on-demand and table-driven routing approaches. Contrary to that is largely presented, in realistic wave propagation model context, taking into account obstacles and their effects such as multi-path one, proactive routing approach performs better than reactive one. In fact, in lossy link context, route request and route error packets broadcasted are significant. In dense network, ZRP, due to its multitude control packets, performs the worst for routing overhead and packet delivery ratio (PDR) parameters.