Comparative Study of Proactive and Reactive Routing Protocols in Wireless Grids

A computational grid network is a combination of different heterogeneous nodes spread over a larger geographical area. These networks can be both wired as well as wireless. In such wireless grid networks, an extensive analysis through simulation is required to understand the performance of a routing protocol. In this paper, the comparison of three important reactive and proactive routing protocols for wireless Grids has been made. The protocols considered are: Destination Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV), Ad-hoc On demand Distance Vector (AODV) and Dynamic Source Routing (DSR). Extensive simulations are done by varying the pause time and taking different Quality of Service (QoS) parameters, both for wireless non-mobile (static) and wireless mobile (dynamic) grid networks on two different topologies – star and grid. After the simulation, it is concluded that the DSR protocol outstands the two other protocols- AODV and DSDV in both the environments.