SURVEY AND TAXONOMY OF UNICAST ROUTING PROTOCOLS FOR MOBILE AD HOC NETWORKS

 The purpose of this paper is to survey the unicast routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and study their primary route selection principle. In this context, we did an exhaustive survey of unicast MANET routing protocols proposed in the literature. Qualitatively, based on their primary route selection principle, we show that all these protocols could be placed under one of two broad route selection categories: routing based on minimum-weight path and routing based on stability. In addition to the primary route selection principle, we also identify the underlying routing metric and the routing philosophy (proactive, reactive, flat, hierarchical, location-awareness, power-sensitiveness and multipath capability) adopted by the different routing protocols. We believe the survey can be a great source of information for researchers in ad hoc networks.