Abstract

Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANET) are form of wireless networks in which nodes can configure by themselves in free and dynamic manner to form temporary network topology. These networks do not have any fixed infrastructure and any centralized administration. Routing is the most challenging task in MANETs as the network topology keeps on changing due to mobility of nodes. Routing involves task of discovering route to destination node for a source to send data packets. In MANET, as there is no fixed infrastructure, nodes act as routers or packet forwarding devices. Ad-hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol used for routing in MANETs is considered most suited for such networks and is selected for introducing a new approach for path discovery. AODV looks for route only when any of the node is having data packets ready to be sent to some destination. But under node mobility and variable node density the performance of AODV reduced. In this paper a Network Path Discovery AODV protocol (NPDAODV) is proposed, which considers node speed, signal strength, distance between nodes and queue occupancy while discovering network path. Also the newly proposed protocol is compared with AMAODV, an earlier work. Network Simulator (NS2) is used to perform the comparative simulations to study the proposed work.