Effect of network density on the performance of MANET routing protocols

A mobile Ad-hoc network consists of nodes communicating with each other without any centralized infrastructure. Mobility and concentration of nodes varies from one location to another. Mobility of nodes in populated urban areas is limited and their concentration is high as compared to rural areas where the concentration of nodes is generally low. Therefore it is necessary to study the effect of network density on the performance of MANET routing protocols. In this paper, the performance of MANET routing protocols is analyzed for scenarios of different network densities. Our analysis shows that network density significantly affect the performance of the MANET routing protocols.