Comparative Analysis of Routing protocols in Wimax environment

Abstract

Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access ( WiMAX) is a technology that bridges the gap between fixed and mobile access and offer the same subscriber experience for fixed and mobile user. Demand for such type of mobile broadband services and applications are growing rapidly as it provides freedom to the subscribers to be online wherever they are at a competitive price and other significant facilities such as increasing amounts of bandwidth, using a variety of mobile and roaming devices. The earliest version of WiMAX is based on IEEE 802.16 and is optimized for fixed and roaming access, which is further extended to support portability and mobility based on IEEE 802.16e, also known as Mobile WiMAX. However, frequent topology changes caused by node mobility make routing in Mobile WiMAX networks a challenging problem. The selection of an appropriate routing protocol is a key issue when designing a scalable and efficient wireless networks. Various routing protocols have been used in wireless networks. In this paper, we investigate different routing protocols and evaluate their performances on 802.16 WiMAX networks. Using simulation, two different routing protocols DSDV and OLSR have been tested. The performance of these routing protocols is evaluated with respect to throughput, end-to-end delay and packet delivery ratio. Results show that DSDV in general performs better than other routing protocols.