Density and Mobility Impact on MANET Routing Protocols in a Maritime Environment

Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETS) are multi hop wireless networks, where a packet hops through a number of intermediate nodes within coverage range of each other to reach the intended destination. The novel application of MANET routing protocols in the marine environment using available technology is one of the contributions of this work. The high cost of other available technologies which require direct connection to IP networks make our approach an attractive proposition for small craft. In this paper we investigate the effect of different maritime traffic patterns on the performance of three different MANET routing protocols which are Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV), Ad hoc On-Demand Multi Path Distance Vector (AOMDV) and Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV). The traffic patterns are represented by different node densities and mobility behaviours which are likely to be found in the marine environment. Performance evaluation of the MANET protocols is compared in terms of packet delivery ratio.