Performance measurement and analysis of ZRP for MANETs using network simulator-QualNet

Without any pre-existing fixed network infrastructure with rapid configuration of wireless connections on-the-fly, network topology in MANETs keep on changing rapidly. Thus achieving data transmissions between wireless nodes in MANETs with improved QoS parameters become a challenging issue. To achieve this one has to concentrate on the routing protocol they choose. In our paper we proposed an algorithm to provide improved quality of service via hybrid routing protocol- Zone Routing Protocol (ZRP). We have considered two reactive routing protocols Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) and Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) as reference for analyzing ZRP by considering route acquisition delay and quick route reconfiguration during link failure. These parameters viz., route acquisition delay and quick route reconfiguration have their impact on increase in end to end delay, this automatically decreases the number of packets received thus the throughput. We used well known network simulator QualNet version 4.5 to compare QoS parameters viz., throughput, number of bytes received, average end-to-end delay for DSR, AODV and ZRP.