Performance Evaluation of Unicast Routing Protocols in MANETs – Current State and Future Prospects

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are considered as a reunion of wireless mobile devices (nodes) that form a temporary wireless network. In order to facilitate communication in MANET, every node has to participate in the routing process. Finding an optimal route is a fundamental task in MANET, where routes tend to be multi-hoped and susceptible. Several routing protocols exist and can be classified as; topology-based and position-based routing protocols. However, the efficiency of these protocols in highly dynamic and dense environments is a challenging task to be considered for increasing perceived Quality of Service (QoS) in MANET. This paper focuses on the presentation and basic operation of each category. A qualitative evaluation between both categories is conducted to achieve a performance comparison in terms of packet- delivery ratio, End-to End delay and routing overhead. Results show that position-based overcome topology-based routing protocols in high dynamic and sparse environments. Recommendations for designing and implementing efficient position-based protocols are presented.