Behavior of Adhoc Routing Protocols for H-MANETs

Abstract

Finite battery power (energy) of the nodes in Mobile Adhoc Networks (MANETs) leads to frequent route failures if not handled properly by a routing protocol. Conditions become worst when a pre assumption is made that all the nodes of the network have equal battery power to communicate. Network scenarios are usually heterogeneous when they are used and realized in real life practical situations. Therefore, considering only homogeneous scenarios restrict the designer to benchmark the performance of a routing protocol to actual practical aspects. Existing protocols and network designs for MANETs not only consider homogeneous scenarios but they are also tested for small size of networks with few numbers of nodes. The throughput achieved by MANETs has been extended its applications to commercial acceptability also. Therefore, to render MANETs services in terms of internet or large number of users, existing protocols should be tested with both large size homogeneous and heterogeneous networks. Thus, scalability becomes another big issue of concern for the better acceptability of a routing protocol for large networks. These limitations make the task of routing very difficult in MANETs. Therefore, routing protocols especially in heterogeneous MANETs (H-MANETs) must be energy efficient and scalable. In this paper, the behavior of some well accepted communication protocols namely AODV, DSR and AOMDV is analyzed for H-MANETs. These protocols have been comprehensively analyzed considering different performance parameters (both traditional and energy related). This paper is aimed to judge the competence of considered protocols in an energy constrained environment with varying network size.