Performance analysis of routing protocols in MANET

Popularity of Mobile ad hoc network in research is due to their ad hoc nature and effectiveness at the time of disaster management when no infrastructure support is available. Due to the limited transmission range of wireless network interfaces, multiple network hops may be needed for nodes to exchange data across the network. In such a network, each mobile node operates as a router, forwarding packets for other mobile nodes in the network that may not be within the direct reach. Routing protocols developed for wired networks such as the distance vector or link state protocols are inadequate here as they not only assume mostly fixed topology but also have high overheads. This has lead to several routing algorithms specifically targeted for ad hoc networks. In this paper, we include the MANET supported routing protocols and their performance analysis over different performance parameters such as packet delivery ratio, delay, throughput, control overhead and energy etc.