A comparative QoS survey of mobile ad hoc network routing protocols

AbstractA mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a wireless, dynamic, infrastructure-less, self-organized, multi-hop, and decentralized network. Each node in MANET can act as a router as well as a work station. Many routing protocols have been developed to increase the efficiency of MANET. The primary objective of this paper is a detailed QoS comparison of reactive (AODV), proactive (DSDV), and hybrid (ZRP) routing protocols of MANET in order to find which routing protocol works best in a particular network scenario. The analysis was made for TCP-based traffic patterns. The performance differentials were analyzed on the basis of normalized routing overhead, packet loss, packet delivery ratio, control packets, end-to-end delay, packet received, and packet sent with a variation of nodes density and mobility. The results were obtained using the NS-2 simulator.