Performance Comparison and Analysis of Mobile Ad Hoc Routing Protocols

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a wireless network that uses multi-hop peer-to-peer routing instead of static network infrastructure to provide network connectivity. MANETs have applications in rapidly deployed and dynamic military and civilian systems. The network topology in a MANET usually changes with time. Therefore, there are new challenges for routing protocols in MANETs since traditional routing protocols may not be suitable for MANETs. Researchers are designing new MANET routing protocols and comparing and improving existing MANET routing protocols before any routing protocols are standardized using simulations. However, the simulation results from different research groups are not consistent with each other. This is because of a lack of consistency in MANET routing protocol models and application environments, including networking and user traffic profiles. Therefore, the simulation scenarios are not equitable for all protocols and conclusions cannot be generalized. Furthermore, it is difficult for one to choose a proper routing protocol for a given MANET application. According to the aforementioned issues, this paper focuses on MANET routing protocols. Specifically, my contribution includes the characterization of different routing protocols and compare and analyze the performance of different routing protocols.