Performance Analysis of Popular MANET Protocols

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) are rapidly advanced and popularly accepted. They play a vital role in different applications and consequently receive a great deal of attention. However, since a MANET has no infrastructure due to its dynamic topology and mobility, routing is still a challenging issue. This paper investigates the performance of three popular routing protocols in MANET systems: DSR, AODV, and DSDV. To measure these MANET protocols' performance metrics (throughput, end to end delay, and data packet ratio); a simulation is conducted for each one using the most popular simulator NS-2 for topologies of 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 nodes. The simulation results clearly showed that DSR performed best in terms of throughput and data packet delivery ratio. But, DSDV's performance superseded that of the other two by achieving the least amount of delay.