Scalability of an ad hoc on-demand routing protocol in very large-scale mobile wireless networks

This article focuses on the performance and scalability study of very large-scale wireless ad hoc networks. As wireless devices become more and more popular, ad hoc networks grow in the number of nodes as well as the complexity of communication among the large number of nodes. However, due to the limitation of simulation technologies, it is either impossible or very hard to investigate the scalability of ad hoc routing protocols in very large-scale wireless networks. In this article, a comprehensive simulation study is conducted of the performance of an on-demand routing protocol on a very large scale, with as many as 50,000 nodes in the network. The authors address the scalability analysis based on various network sizes, node density, traffic load, and mobility. The reasons for packet loss are analyzed and categorized at each network layer. Based on the observations, the authors optimize the parameter selection and try to exhaust the scalability boundary of the on-demand routing protocol for wireless ad hoc networks.