ABSTRACT

Ad hoc networks are multi-hop wireless networks having dynamic topology due to node mobility. Routing protocols for such networks should be able to respond rapidly to topological changes. Designing and analyzing routing protocols for handling time-constrained messages in such dynamic environment is very crucial. A number of routing protocols have been proposed that deal with time-constrained messages. But despite some faulty nodes, link failure, route breakage or some other faults, it is required that the messages reach their destination within time. An adaptive fault tolerant replication strategy has already been designed and referred as Adaptive Fault Tolerant Replication (AFTR) routing that handle time-constrained messages. This paper is an extension work to study the performance of such protocol. The performance of any protocol can be analyzed through some metrics under various influential factors. The paper presents performance study of AFTR routing protocol based on three performance metrics packet delivery ratio, routing overhead and throughput under five influential factors: network size, transmission rate, node mobility, pause time and optimal number of copies. A 2kr factorial design strategy is used to quantify the main and interactional effects of various factors on metrics. A two-way interaction is expressed as linear regression equation.