A Performance Comparison study of Unicast and Multicast Routing Protocols for Mobile Ad hoc Networks

The network structures have changed significantly in the recent years. In spite of the wireless network challenges namely: changes in network topology, high error rates, power restrictions, bandwidth constraints and issues with link capacity, these networks have become popular. Researchers have contributed to a great extent to solve these challenges with innovative solution to support robust and efficient operation of mobile wireless network. Active research work for mobile ad hoc network is carried out mainly in the fields of medium access control, routing, resource management, power control and security. Because of the importance of routing protocols in dynamic multi-hop networks, a lot of mobile ad hoc network routing protocols have been proposed in the last few years. There are some challenges that make the design of mobile ad hoc network routing protocols a tough task. Firstly, in mobile ad hoc networks, node mobility causes frequent topology changes and network partitions. Secondly, because of the variable and unpredictable capacity of wireless links, packet losses may happen frequently. Moreover, the broadcast nature of wireless medium introduces the hidden terminal and exposed terminal problems. Additionally, mobile nodes have restricted power, computing and bandwidth resources and require effective routing schemes. One of the main areas of research is routing packets from source to destination. Different classification of Mobile network Ad hoc Routing protocols according to different criteria is presented. The Mobile Ad hoc network routing protocols and related problems are identified. Unicast and multicast routing protocols are compared from an analysis point of view based on the classification methods.