# Bat Optimized Link State Routing Protocol for Energy-Aware Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks
## 6 Discussion  
This work proposes an improved BOLSR routing protocol based on the OSLR protocol. It is compared with the performance of the CAABO, EBOLSR, and OLSR according to the number of nodes, node speed, and simulation time scenarios in terms of energy consumption, end to end delay, and routing overhead ratio. These comparisons are made to check and evaluate the ability and the performance of the BOLSR in MANET. The BOLSR maintains the lowest overhead ratio, delay, and energy among the rest which implies its ability to find the optimal path based on three quality parameters (energy, overhead, and delay). This in return ensures producing a stable network by decreasing the probability of the link failure and ensuring the successful transmission for the highest amount of data to the destination nodes.  
The results of energy consumption, overhead ratio, and E2E delay for all routing protocols in the three scenarios reveal that every scenario has a different impact on the performance of the routing protocols. In all routing protocols, the energy consumption and overhead ratio increases with the increase of the number of nodes, node speed, and simulation time. It is because the nodes need to exchange information through flooding mechanisms for route discovery. Subsequently, the route discovery process consumes higher energy compared to the normal data exchange between MANET nodes. On the other hand, the E2E delay decreases when increasing the number of nodes, as the connections between nodes are becoming easier and require less time. Whilst, when increasing the node speed and simulation time the delay is increased because the node speed and the simulation time have negative effects on the link stability which, in turn, increases the delay. The results clearly show that the node speed scenario has a greater negative impact on the performance of the four routing protocols in which it tremendously increases the probability of link failure. The stability of the network under the node speed scenario depends on the mobility of the node in which the best stability is when the nodes are staying near their initial position (static network). This issue reduces the need for reconstructing new routes. On the other hand, the change in node speed changes the topology of the network and makes the network unstable.  
The standard deviation values of the five runs state the variance in the performance of the protocols. The protocols aim to find the optimal routes from all possible routes within the network dynamics. The lesser variation in the SD values refers to the high stability of the network, and vice versa. The performance metric assessed for each routing protocol under three different scenarios and the results show that the SD of the metrics is lower in the number of nodes, and simulation time  
Figure 16: E2E delay vs. simulation time.  
scenarios than the node speed scenario. As a result, node speed represents the bottleneck of the test. As the node speed decreases, the stability of the network increases until the nodes become near to their initial position and the network reaches the static state. The static network has stable routes and less route reconstruction. However, one of the most advanced features of the MANET is node mobility and hence the routing protocols should be resistant to node speed.  
The research scope limited this paper to focus on energy consumption, delay, and overhead parameters in finding the best route. Nevertheless, the BOLSR maintains the shortest route and a maximum number of connections of the conventional OLSR. There are some other parameters studied in the literature such as the number of hops and bandwidth that are not covered in this work.