Experimental comparison of hybrid and proactive MANET routing protocols

The paper describes an experimental implementation of a QoS-aware hybrid routing protocol that uses a flexible mix of proactive and reactive routing techniques within mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). After a brief review of the benefits and applications of proactive, reactive (on-demand) and hybrid routing, the architectural details and protocol operation of Scientific Research Corporation's "wireless ad hoc routing protocol" (WARP) are given. The paper then discusses the laboratory testing methodology used during the development of WARP, and gives an experimental comparison of WARP with a proactive routing protocol, namely optimized link state routing (OLSR).