Mobile Ad Hoc Network Routing Protocols: A Comparative Study

An Ad hoc network is a collection of wireless mobile hosts forming a temporary network without the aid of any centralized administration or infrastructure. Such networks have no fixed topology due to the highdegree of node mobility. Hence, efficient and reliable routing is one of the key challenges in mobile ad hoc networks. Many routing algorithms have been proposed and developed for accomplishing this task. Therefore, it is difficult to determine which protocol performs best under a number of different scenarios. Hence, this paper presents review and a comparison of the typical representatives of routing protocolsdesigned for MANETs.