In this thesis a new routing protocol for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs) has been developed and simulated. The protocol is named IWDHocNet. With the explosion of technology, the networks are becoming increasingly diverse and heterogeneous. MANETs do not require a fixed infrastructure whereas simple wireless networks require an infrastructure and access points connected to a backbone. In MANETs all the nodes act as routers and participate in discovery and maintenance of routes. These features of MANET pose extra challenges for routing. IWDHocNet addresses the challenges of MANET. IWDHocNet protocol takes its inspiration from how the swarm of water drops moves through the rivers to find the optimum path.
The protocol was simulated in NS-2 simulator under a variety of network conditions by varying the node mobility and data traffic. The performance of the protocol was compared with two other established routing protocols such as AODV and DSDV. The comparisons were made based on three performance metrics – packet delivery ratio, average end-to-end delay and average routing load.
We have found when the mobility of network is not very fast, the performance of the network is comparable to DSDV and AODV. However, for dynamic network with highly mobile nodes, AODV outperformed IWDHocNet, although the performance was still comparable with DSDV in some situations.
IWDHocNet is proactive in its current form. For future work, it is proposed to adapt the IWDHocNet routing protocol to be reactive like AODV as it may improve the performance.