Jitter based Comparison of Proactive, Reactive and Hybrid Routing Protocols in Mobile Ad-hoc Network

A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is a self-configuring infrastructure less network of mobile devices connected by wireless links. Each device in a MANET is free to move independently in any direction, and will therefore change its links to other devices frequently. Each must forward traffic unrelated to its own use, and therefore be a router. The primary challenge in building a MANET is equipping each device to continuously maintain the information required to properly route traffic. Its routing protocol has to be able to cope with the new challenges that a MANET creates such as nodes mobility, security maintenance, and quality of service, limited bandwidth and limited power supply. These challenges set new demands on MANET routing protocols. With the increasing interest in MANETs, there has been a greater focus on the subject of improving the quality of service as per the requirement of the user according to the various conditions such as cell size, weather, traffic, mobility of users etc. The main objective of this paper is to compare the performance based on jitter present in transmission of packet in a MANET by using different types of protocols viz: Proactive, Reactive, Hybrid. This system is developed for IEEE 802.11b based Wireless network and simulated through Qualnet 5.0. Packet size and No. of users are the two parameters in this paper which helps to find out the suitable type of traffic that can be use in a MANET.