| With the increasing demand for mobile broadband service, and the expectations of an enriched end user experience expanding beyond just homes and offices, the best available network technology in the present market is Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WIMAX). It has a great potential to become commercially successful due to its high throughput, large coverage and low cost.In this study, a simulation of a WIMAX network with mobility is performed. The network scenario for the simulation replicates a practical, real-world network as closely as possible. In this scenario, the behavior of routing protocols under the influence of WIMAX tower handovers is examined. The routing protocols analyzed are Destination Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV), Ad Hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) and Dynamic MANET On Demand (DYMO). The protocols are compared on the basis of throughput and average end-to-end delay. The effect of parameters such as network load and network size on the performance of the routing protocols is also examined.This study demonstrates that the performance of a routing protocol is clearly dependent on the application for which it is used. Table driven routing protocols such as DSDV perform poorly in networks with mobility. AODV performs well in large networks with low to medium loads, while DYMO performs well in both small networks and large networks with heavy loads. |
