Effect of Traffic Load on The Performance of Proactive, Reactive and Hybrid MANET Protocols

Abstract

Mobile Ad hoc NETwork (MANET) is a collection of mobile devices (called nodes) that communicate with each other without the use of infrastructure such as access points or base stations. These networks are self-configuring, capable of self-directed operations and are easily deployable. Nodes cooperate to provide connectivity and operate without centralized administration. Nodes in the network are able to communicate together via a routing protocol which finds the best route to the destination. In MANETs how a route is established between a source and its destination through the network is of importance and of greater importance is how various user traffic data are routed to their various destinations. The performance evaluation of various routing protocols for MANETs have been presented in various research work however, no research work has examined the performance of proactive, reactive and hybrid routing protocols vis--vis Optimized Link State routing (OLSR), Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) and GRP protocols under heavy network traffic load. In this paper, a comparison of the performances of proactive (OLSR), Reactive (DSR) and Hybrid (GRP) routing protocols are made under intense network traffic load.