COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PROACTIVE AND REACTIVE ROUTING PROTOCOLS IN MOBILE AD-HOC NETWORKS (MANET)

An ad hoc network is an autonomous system that can communicate freely and dynamically self organize into arbitrary forming a temporary network without the use of any existing network infrastructure or centralized administration improved flexibility and reduced cost. An important and essential issue for mobile ad hoc networks is routing protocol design that is a major technical challenge due to the noisy, limited-range, and insecure wireless transmissions added to mobility and energy constraints of the network. The use of a simulation for ad hoc networks offers a feasible way to design and improve the performance of routing protocols. The main objective is to generate stable routing protocol with mobile nodes, features of various routing protocols. In this articles discuss two types of protocols proactive routing protocol and reactive routing protocol and qualitative based comparison of both routing protocols in mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). KeywordsAd-hoc Networks, Proactive Routing, Reactive Routing Protocols, MANET Journal of Information and Operations Management ISSN: 0976–7754 & E-ISSN: 0976–7762 , Volume 3, Issue 1, 2012 Introduction A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) [1] group has been formed within IETF. The goal is to support mobile ad hoc networks with hundreds of routers and solve challenges. A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a self-configuring infrastructure less network of mobile devices connected by wireless links. Each device in a MANET is free to move independently in any direction, and will therefore change its links to other devices frequently. An ad hoc network is a collection of mobile computers or mobile nodes that cooperate to forward packets for each other to extend the limited transmission range of each node’s wireless network interface. Each must forward traffic unrelated to its own use, and therefore be a router. Wireless networks are an emerging new technology that will allow users to access information and services electronically, regardless of their geographic position. Wireless networks can be classified in two type’s infrastructure network and infrastructure less (ad hoc) networks. Infrastructures network consists of a network with fixed and wired gateways. A mobile host communicates with a bridge in the Network or called base station within its communication radius. The mobile unit can move geographically while it is communicating. When it goes out of range of one base station, it connects with new base station and starts communicating through it. Mobile ad hoc networks originated from the DARPA (PRNet) [10] and SURAN project [10]. Being independent on pre-established infrastructures has a several advantages such as rapid and easy to deployment improved flexibility and reduced costs . mobile ad hoc networks gain more and more importance in non military public organization, commercial and industrial areas with including applications such as rescue missions, law enforcement operations, the cooperating industrial robots, the traffic management and educational operations in campus. Mobile ad hoc networks pose several technical and research challenges that need to be addressed. Ad hoc architecture has many benefits, such as self-reconfiguration and adaptability to highly variable mobile characteristics such as power and transmission conditions, traffic distributions, and load balancing. These benefits pose new challenges which mainly reside in the unpredictability of network topology due to the mobility of nodes, which, coupled with the local broadcast capability, causCitation: Suresh Kumar and Jogendra Kumar (2012) Comparative Analysis of Proactive and Reactive Routing Protocols in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (Manet). Journal of Information and Operations Management ISSN: 0976–7754 & E-ISSN: 0976–7762, Volume 3, Issue 1, pp-9295. Copyright: Copyright©2012 Suresh Kumar and Jogendra Kumar . This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.