Mobile Adhoc Network (MANET) Protocol Performance with Mobility and Tx Power Variations

A Mobile Ad-hoc network (MANET) is a network consisting of a combination of mobile devices without infrastructure, thus forming a temporary network. Each device has a wireless interface and communicates with each other via radio waves; then, each device is called a node. In a Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET), each node can act as a host or a router, so it needs a routing protocol to function. There are three types of routing protocols for Ad-Hoc networks: proactive, reactive, and hybrid. Reactive routing protocols are on-demand, meaning they establish a route from a source node to a destination node only when requested by the source node. Proactive routing protocols are table-driven, where each node maintains a table containing route information to every other node it knows. The route information is periodically updated in case there is a change in the link. The hybrid protocol combines the features of reactive and proactive protocol types. This paper builds upon previous work in this area. The study involves performance testing of MANET protocols like Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV), DestinationSequenced Distance-Vector (DSDV), Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), and Optimized Link State Protocol (OLSR) with varying mobility scenarios and transmitter power on the node to observe changes in network characteristics and their impact on protocol performance. Evaluation is based on the receive rate and packet received. The results indicate that the AODV routing protocol outperforms DSR, DSDV, and OLSR.