Analysis the Overhead of IEEE 802.11 RTS/CTS Handshake in Ad-hoc Networks Based Multipath Routing

Multipath routing protocols with load balance, fault tolerance, aggregated bandwidth in Ad-hoc Networks provide improved throughput and reliable route as compared with singlepath routing protocols. However, multipath routing protocols have not been explored thoroughly in the domain of overhead in Ad-hoc Networks. In this paper, we analyze and compare on-demand singlepath and multipath routing with IEEE 802.11 DCF in terms of Routing overhead and MAC overhead. The results reveals that in comparison with singlepath routing protocol, multipath routing mechanism creates more overheads but provides better performance in congestion and capacity provided that the route length is within a certain upper bound which is derivable. The analytical results are further confirmed by simulation.