A Performance Evaluation of Multi-Path Routing Protocols for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs), interference significantly diminishes the network performance. Some interference-aware multi-path protocols were proposed to minimize the impact of interference. However, these protocols are not highly efficient or have a very high computational complexity (NP-hard). In this paper, we present our studies, firstly, an extended definition of interference; secondly, a formula of interference; thirdly, build Node-disjoint Interference-Aware Multi-path Routing protocol (NIA-MPOLSR) and the Link-disjoint Interference-Aware Multi-path Routing protocol (LIA-MPOLSR) on our definition of interference and formula of interference. NIA-MPOLSR and LIA-MPOLSR find paths only in polynomial time. They can improve 33% in terms of packet delivery fraction and 7.5 times in terms of end-to-end delay compared to the prominent protocol AOMDV. We also compare two multi-path protocols NIA-MPOLSR and LIA-MPOLSR with each other when the RTS/CTS mechanism is alternatively enabled and disabled. Finally, we show the significant impact of the RTS/CTS mechanism on the network performance.