Comparative Scalability Analysis of AODV and DSDV Routing in Dense Wireless Mesh Networks

Abstract

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are a key enabling technology for dynamic, infrastructure-limited IoT environments. The routing protocol is the central design choice in any WMN deployment because throughput, end-to-end delay, energy consumption and delivery reliability are directly affected by it. A systematic, simulation-based evaluation of two widely studied WMN routing protocols is presented: the reactive Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV, RFC 3561) protocol and the proactive Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector (DSDV) protocol. Simulations were conducted in OMNeT++ 6.3 with the INET 4.5 framework across five network densities $(N \in\{10,20,30,40,50\}$ nodes) in a $1000 ~\mathrm{m} \times 1000 ~\mathrm{m}$ IEEE 802.11g area with a many-to-one UDP traffic pattern representative of IoT data collection. A density-dependent crossover was revealed at approximately $N=20$: lower delay was achieved by DSDV in sparse networks, whereas higher throughput, higher delivery reliability and lower energy consumption were achieved by AODV at higher densities. At $N=50, \approx 35 \%$ higher throughput, zero routing failures and $\approx 8 \%$ lower energy consumption are delivered by AODV. It is indicated by the MAC-layer contention behavior that DSDV's high-density degradation is mainly driven by IEEE 802.11 channel saturation rather than by routing-algorithm deficiencies. Deployment guidelines derived from these findings are provided.