Comprehensive Performance Evaluation of Self-Organizing MANET Routing Protocols in Urban Emergency Scenarios Under Random Obstacle Mobility Model

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) represents a collection of dynamically self-configuring mobile nodes operating without a fixed physical infrastructure or centralized administration. This article analyzes which of the routing strategies for MANET—proactive, reactive, or multipath reactive—offers the best results. For the measurement, twenty-four simulations were established in emergency situations in an urban area. In addition to the defined quality of service (QoS) parameters, this involved calculating node densities and conducting a descriptive analysis of the experimental results; a statistical analysis is also included to characterize the behavior of the protocols and obtain the Relative Performance Improvement (RPI) and Overall Performance Index (OPI). The AODV, DSDV, and AOMDV protocols were used in these simulations, and the AOMDV protocol offered the best QoS with the random obstacle mobility model in the NS2 tool.