Simulation Study to Observe the Effects of Increasing Each of The Network Size and the Network Area Size on MANET’s Routing Protocols

Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is one of the essential required wireless networks in this era. The routing process is one of the most important challenges that faces the designers and the managers of such networks. While, the performance evaluation is the main process that must be controlled in order to test, improve and develop any new or available MANET. This network’s performance can be measured using many metrics such as throughput, delay, overhead, etc. This paper represents a behavioral study for certain MANET Routing protocols using OPNET Modeler with respect to three performance metrics (Throughput, Routing Overhead and Delay). Different scenarios with different number of nodes (network size) and different network area size were applied and implemented. Three routing protocols namley (Adhoc On-Demand Distance (AODV), Optimized Link State Routing protocol (OLSR) and Geographic Routing Protocol (GRP)) were used and applied in this study.