Survey of mobile ad hoc network routing protocols

Abstract

Emerging ubiquitous computing needs "anytime and anywhere" network connections. Mobile ad hoc networks are well suited for this application area because they are self-organizing networks without depending on any network infrastructure. Due to the improved flexibility and reduced cost of mobile ad hoc networks, they promise to play an important role in future mobile applications. An important and essential issue for mobile ad hoc networks is routing protocol design. Because of the dynamic network features, it is a major technical challenge. During the last years, active research work resulted in a variety of proposals. A large number of protocols, each with a particular property and often optimized for a specific application area, have been designed. They follow different design principles and exhibit substantial variations in performance depending on network size or node mobility patterns. This report presents a state-of-the-art review and a comparison for typical representatives of routing protocols designed for mobile ad hoc networks. The report aims at providing criteria according to which the plethora of protocols can be classified. Because it is difficult to compare all protocols along the same criteria, which some protocols may have others not, we first identify major protocol classes and then provide an in depth comparison of related protocols of the same category.