Abstract
Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANET s) are becoming an essential part of wireless communication due to the growing popularity of mobile devices. MANET has the inherent ability to be self-configured, needless infrastructure and enabling the device to device communication. In MANET each mobile node acts as a router to forward or receive the packets. Nodes are deployed at some locations and support less-infrastructure architecture. These mobile nodes that are in radio range can communicate directly, whereas the intermediate nodes are required for forward and receive purpose. This environment of MANETs has been facilitating the distributed approach over the centralized one. Moreover, the applications are diverse and have always been demanding the efficient routing algorithm. This paper proposes an efficient routing protocol by analyzing the proactive, reactive and Hybrid routing protocols. The study relates the Quality of Service parameters of MANET routing protocols i-e DSDV, DSR, AODV and ZRP using Network Simulator (NS-2). The performance has been analyzed on the basis of End to End Delay, Throughput, Packet Delivery Ratio, Packet dropped, Packet Sent and Received and Normalized Routing Load under different scenarios (varying the traffic type, packet size and the node’s mobility). The study concludes that no single protocol fulfills all the requirement. A protocol may have been chosen on the basis of traffic type, packet size, node’s mobility and on demand requirement of QOS parameter. The study also concludes that DSDV is better in terms of Average End to End delay. However, DSR, AODV and ZRP are best suited for Throughput. AODV shows the high (Constant) PDF value with respect to nodes and DSR scales well when the node density increases where as DSDV demonstrate the constant behavior (low in value) with varying node density. Moreover, ZRP scales well in low density mode concerning PDF.