Abstract-Routing is a critical issue in MANET and therefore, this is the focus of this paper, along with the performance analysis of its routing protocols. In this paper the performance of four MANET routing protocols (AODV, DSR, OLSR and GRP) are compared. To evaluate and validate the performance of these protocols, a feasibility study in the form of simulations were carried out. In these experiments, the four protocols were tested under different scenarios and circumstances using a simulation tool called OPNET. The performance of these routing protocols is analyzed based on two performance metrics: delay and through put. The simulation results have shown that on average, under heavy FTP traffic condition, the OLSR protocol outperforms the other three protocols with respect to the mentioned metrics under two scenarios (20 and 80 mobile nodes) that have been created in OPNET.
Index Terms-FTP, MANET, OPNET, routing protocols.
I. INTRODUCTIONThe emergence of wireless networks has gone a long way in solving the growing service demands. The focus of research and development endeavor has almost shifted from wired networks to wireless networks. The limitations of wireless network techniques such as high error rate, power restrictions, bandwidth limitations and other constraints have not deterred the growth of wireless networks [1]. Mobile Ad-hoc network (MANET) is one of the most demanding field in the area of wireless network MANET consist of mobile devices or users which are generally known as nodes, and each one of which is equipped with a radio transmitter and a receiver [2]. MANET is a temporary network of wireless mobile nodes which has no fixed infrastructure. There are no dedicated routers, servers, access points, base stations and cables [3]. The mobile nodes which are within each other's transmission range can communicate with each other directly; or else, other nodes in between can forward the packets if the source and the destination node are -out‖ of each other's range. Every node acts as a router to forward the packets to other nodes whenever required [4]. One of the main areas of research is the packet routing technology, which is the focus of this paper.Mobile ad-hoc network is -infrastructure-less networks‖ Manuscript received October 21, 2015; revised December 25, 2015. This work was fully funded by the University of Benghazi through the Faculty of Information Technology research budget. The authors would like to thank the staff at computer networks lab for their support and assistance with this project.The authors are with the Benghazi University, Libya (e-mail: a.aneiba@uob.edu.ly, m.melad@uob.edu.ly).having nodes which can act as a transmitter, router or receiver. MANETs have a dynamic topology where nodes are mobile. To monitor the workings of these nodes and the nature in which they behave while sending, receiving or forwarding data is classified by a set of rules known as routing protocols [5].In this paper, four major MANET routing protocols (AODV, DSR, OLSR and GRP) have been evaluated. The e...