Simulation and Evaluation of Routing Protocols for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs)

Mobile Ad hoc networks (MANETs) are of much interest to both the research community and the military because of the potential to establish a communication network in any situation that involves emergencies. Examples are search-and-rescue operations, military deployment in hostile environment, and several types of police operations. One critical open issue is how to route messages considering the characteristics of these networks. The nodes act as routers in an environment without a fixed infrastructure, the nodes are mobile, the wireless medium has its own limitations compared to wired networks, and existing routing protocols cannot be employed at least without modifications. Over the last few years, a number of routing protocols have been proposed and enhanced to solve routing in MANETs. It is not clear how those different protocols perform under different environments. One protocol may be the best in one network configuration but the worst in another. This thesis describes a study of those protocols that are best from a DoD perspective. These wireless mobile networks were simulated under different mobility and traffic scenarios to evaluate their performance. The results showed which protocols performed better under several relevant scenarios and exposed a number of design flaws. The original document contains color images.