Critical performance comparison of on-demand routing protocols for optimal application in Wireless sensor network

Modern advancement in efficient and affordable electronic devices has developed a huge range of applications in the domain of wireless networks. An essential problem addressed in this Wireless sensor network is that the nodes communicate with each other or with base station without any network infrastructure or central administration. They can communicate using wireless channels and can exchange data using multiple hops. For efficient and timely delivery of data or messages, reliable routing protocols are required by these wireless networks for communication. Through this paper, a critical comparative analysis is done on popular routing protocols. The protocols on which analysis is performed are Dynamic Source Routing Protocol (DSR), Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing Protocol (AODV) and Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector Routing Protocol (DSDV). These were analyzed depending upon the performance metrics based on Packet loss, Energy Consumed and Average End to End Delay while varying different factor such as number of nodes, simulation time and speed in m/s. The simulator used is NS-2 installed on the Ubuntu (Linux) operating system. Performance evaluation of these three routing protocols have proven that each of three routing protocols can be more optimally and efficiently utilized for specific applications of Wireless Sensor Network taking advantage of the respective merits judiciously.