Multi-path Routing Protocols in Wireless Mobile Ad Hoc Networks: A Quantitative Comparison

Multi-path routing represents a promising routing method for wireless mobile ad hoc networks. Multi-path routing achieves load balancing and is more resilient to route failures. Recently, numerous multi-path routing protocols have been proposed for wireless mobile ad hoc networks. Performance evaluations of these protocols showed that they achieve lower routing overhead, lower end-to-end delay and alleviate congestion in comparison with single path routing protocols. However, a quantitative comparison of multi-path routing protocols has not yet been conducted. In this work, we present the results of a detailed simulation study of three multi-path routing protocols (SMR, AOMDV and AODV_Multipath) obtained with the ns-2 simulator. The simulation study shows that the AOMDV protocol achieves best performance in high mobility scenarios, while AODV_Multipath performs better in scenarios with low mobility and higher node density. SMR performs best in networks with low node density, however as density increases, the protocol’s performance is degrading.