Unicaste Routing Protocols in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks: A Survey

Mobile Ad hoc-networks (MANETs) are becoming increasingly important in today’s world. An important and essential issue for mobile ad hoc networks is routing protocol design. A major technical challenge in routing is due to the mobility of nodes in the network. During the last decade, active research work resulted in a variety of proposals. Routing protocols can be classified via the type of caste property, whether they are unicaste, multicast and broadcast. Further, ad-hoc unicaste routing protocols are classified into three categories: table driven, on-demand and hybrid. We filtered the total studies and reviewed various research papers published between 1998 and 2012. This paper presents a review and discusses 19 unicaste routing protocols designed for mobile ad hoc networks belonging to each category. Further advantages and disadvantages of each protocol are discussed.