A Holistic Analysis of MANETs Routing Protocols in Diverse Mobility Models

This paper conducts a comprehensive analysis of routing protocols in MANETs across diverse mobility models. As the DYMO and FSR are not part of NS2, we have extended NS2 by incorporating existing implementations. Performance metrics, including PDR, throughput, routing overhead, NRL and TEC are used to evaluate protocols. Through simulations in NS - 2.35 with various mobility models, the study finds that TCP ensures high PDR across all scenarios, with reactive protocols—particularly DSR—maintaining stable delivery even in highly dynamic environments. FSR demonstrates high sensitivity to mobility, with significant PDR drops under the GM model. In terms of routing overhead, DSR achieves the lowest, while FSR exhibits consistently high overhead. Throughput analysis shows that DYMO delivers the most reliable performance across all mobility models, while FSR and OLSR perform best only under low mobility. NRL remains lowest among reactive protocols, with DSR being the most efficient. Energy consumption is relatively stable across all protocols, though FSR consumes less under high mobility due to reduced activity from degraded performance. Overall, reactive protocols, especially DYMO and DSR, demonstrate strong adaptability and efficiency in dynamic conditions, while proactive protocols are more suited to structured, low-mobility networks.