A Comparative Analysis of Mobile Ad Hoc Network Protocols

An ad-hoc network is a collection of wireless mobile nodes dynamically forming a temporary network without the use of any existing infrastructure or centralized administration. The communication in ad hoc networks can be direct or through multiple hops in between. Quality of Service (QoS) is concerned with providing a minimum guarantee to the services such as bandwidth, throughput, end to end delay, jitter delay, etc. There are an increasing number of real-time and multimedia applications requiring quality of service (QoS) guarantees. This paper simulates mobile ad hoc networks with three different protocols: AODV, DSR and DSDV. By varying certain parameters such as pause time and number of nodes, its effect on QoS provided by these protocols and their suitability to various applications requiring some minimum level of QoS will be determined. This paper intends to bring about a comparative analysis of these three methods vis-à-vis end to end delay, packet delivery fraction and throughput. This paper studies the performance of a routing protocol vis-à-vis pause time and varying network size. The number of nodes in MANET significantly affects the network performance and hence the QoS. The pause time of nodes, which defines the mobility pattern, is another important factor.