Comparative Performance Analysis of Routing Protocols for WANET Employing Qualnet 5

摘要

Wireless ad hoc networks (WANETs) have inherently different properties than traditional wired networks. Ad hoc wireless networks consist of nodes which communicate with each other without predefined existing infrastructure. Network topology frequently changes due to the movements of the nodes. Broadcast packets are regularly sent to network so that nodes in network can stay in communication with each other. Conventional routing protocols in order to accommodate change in configuration, needs to maintain links between nodes. Reactive and proactive routing algorithms are used in ad hoc networks, where routing overhead increases in the case of large number of nodes and higher mobility of nodes. Bandwidth and battery lives of nodes are two main limited sources in ad hoc networks and hence reduction in routing overhead and efficient use of sources are very important issues in these networks. Paper presents a comparative study of performance analysis of routing protocols based on reactive, proactive and hybrid algorithms in order to achieve the issues.