A Comparative Study of Channel Fading Effect on Ad Hoc Routing Protocols

Ad hoc networking is a technology still under development and there are several proposals for defining the most suitable routing protocol. The topology of an ad hoc network may change dynamically, which makes it difficult to design an efficient routing protocol. This paper presents a comprehensive study on the performance of ad hoc network routing protocols under realistic network scenarios with the effect of channel fading models. The routing protocols used in this study include DSR, AODV, & ZRP which comprise a good mix of reactive, proactive & hybrid protocols.Their performance is analyzed on throughput, jitterand end-to end delay, energy consideration (transmitting and receiving mode) measuring metrics by varying CBR data traffic load using QualNet 5.0 network simulator.