Survey on Mobile Ad Hoc Network Routing Protocols

Abstract

An ad hoc network is a collection of autonomous mobile nodes to forming an instant multihop radio infrastructure-less network in a dynamic topology. Each node in Ad hoc network, f unctions as host and router at the same time, where maintaining connectivity in a decentralized manner by distributing the network control among the nodes. A large number of routing protocols for mobile ad-hoc networks are presented since last decade. Topology frequently changing, transmission power and asymmetric links are the main challenge that type of protocols is facing. This has led to development of many different routing protocols for MANETs, and each author of each proposed protocol argues that the strategy proposed provides an improvement over a number of different strategies considered in the literature for a given network scenario. Therefore, it is quite difficult to determine which protocols may perform best under a number of different network scenarios, such as increasing node density and traffic. In this paper, we provide an overview of a wide range of routing protocols proposed in the literature till date. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that studies nearly fifty two existing routing protocols in Ad hoc Networks.