Mobile Ad Hoc Networks under Flooding Attack: Performance Evaluation of Routing Protocols
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54580/R0801.17Keywords:
MANETs, Performance Evaluation, Flooding Attack, OMNeT++Abstract
Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) have critical applications in infrastructure-less scenarios such as rescue operations, military environments, and temporary Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) deployments; however, they face challenges related to mobility, multi-hop communication, and vulnerability to security attacks. This study comparatively evaluates the routing protocols AODV (Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector), DSDV (Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector), and GPSR (Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing) under normal conditions and under an extreme Flooding attack. To this end, simulations were conducted using OMNeT++/INET with the IEEE 802.11 standard, considering a 600×600 m topology, UDP-CBR traffic with 256-byte packets, four attacking nodes, and ten repetitions per scenario. The evaluated metrics include Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), Throughput, and End-to-End Delay. Under normal conditions, AODV and DSDV achieved a PDR of 98%, whereas GPSR reached 7.03%. Under Flooding attack, the PDR dropped to 31.13% for AODV, 18.63% for DSDV, and 1.91% for GPSR. Throughput decreased from 10.14 to 2.76 kbps for AODV, from 4.06 to 1.65 kbps for DSDV, and from 0.71 to 0.17 kbps for GPSR. Regarding latency, AODV remained stable (approximately 528 to 560 ms), while DSDV and GPSR exhibited delays on the order of 5×10⁴–6×10⁴ ms, rendering them unsuitable for real-time applications. As a contribution, this work provides a reproducible simulation pipeline (NED/INI), standardized metrics (PDR, Delay, Throughput), and estimates with 95% confidence intervals. The impact of this study lies in delivering practical evidence for protocol selection based on robustness and latency requirements, as well as supporting the design of detection and mitigation strategies for attacks in MANETs.
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