Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are considered as a new paradigm of infrastructure-less mobile wireless communication systems. MANETs are being widely studied and it is the technology that is attracting a large variety of applications. Routing in MANETs is considered a challenging task due to the unpredictable changes in the network topology, resulting from the random and frequent movement of the nodes and due to the absence of any centralized control [1][2]. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of reactive routing protocols, Ad hoc On demand Distance Vector (AODV) and Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) and proactive routing protocol Destination Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV). The major goal of this study is to analyze the performance of well known MANETs routing protocol in high mobility case under low, medium and high density scenario. Unlike military applications, most of the other applications of MANETs require moderate to high mobility. Hence it becomes important to study the impact of high mobility on the performance of these routing protocols. The performance is analyzed with respect to Average End-to-End Delay, Normalized Routing Load (NRL), Packet Delivery Fraction (PDF) and Throughput. Simulation results verify that AODV gives better performance as compared to DSR and DSDV.

11 Pages, 8 Figure and 2 Tables