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Volume 3, Issue 12, December 2015

Characteristics, Applications and Challenges in

Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANET): Overview
Abdalftah Kaid Said Ali1, Dr. U. V. Kulkarni2
1

Research Scholar, S.G.G.S. Institute of Engg. & Tech, S.R.T.M. University, Nanded, Mahrarashtra, India
2

Professor, Dept. of Computer Sci & Engg, S.G.G.S. Institute of Engg & Tech, Nanded,
S.R.T.M. University, Nanded, Mahrarashtra, India

ABSTRACT
A Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is a contenting collection of mobile devices, the wireless network can reconfigure by itself
contenting group of mobile devices. This network can work without any fixed infrastructure, the nodes in the networks work as
router as well as host. This paper provides insight a comprehensive overview of Mobile Ad hoc networks. This paper also
reviews the various characteristics, challenges, applications of MANETS. Moreover, routing protocol for MANET have been
presented in this paper.

Keywords: MANET, Proactive, Reactive, Hybrid, Routing Protocols.

1. INTRODUCTION
In the beginning, the mobile packet radio network was used in the military. Then, in the past few years, it has been fast
developed into mobile ad hoc network (MANEN), which allow users to access service and exchange information
electronically without any consideration of the geographical advancement in the domain of personal common people to
use mobile phones to communicate with other people any where anytime irrespective of their being far off [1]. The
wireless network, which is a growing new technology, allows users to access services and information. It can be
expanded anywhere or building without a wired connection between the clients. The wireless network can be classified
into two main types: the infrastructure network (WLAN) and the Infrastructureless (ad-hoc) network. Infrastructure
network is composed of some of nodes and access point (AP), which acts as a central coordinator between all nodes.
The nodes cant work outside the domain of access point. An ad hoc network typically refers to any group of networks
where all devices have equal status on a network and are free to connect with any other ad hoc network devices in link
range. An ad hoc network can be defined as a collection of mobile nodes which form an instant network without fixed
topology. The node functions as a router and host at the same time, and it can move out or join in the network freely
[2]. The ad hoc network that is instantly created does not possess any base infrastructures that are used in the
conventional network. In spite of that, it is compatible with the traditional networks. Wireless network has been
popularized in the domain of computing industry.
The Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) enjoys some of characteristics: distributed operation, dynamic topology, lightweight terminals, multi hop routing, shared physical medium and autonomous terminal, which will be discussed in
some detail later in this paper. Due to the rapid and growing expansion of the mobile ad hoc network, it has many
typical applications such emergency services, education, entertainmentetc. In spite of all this characteristics of the
MANET, it faces some challenges the most significant of which are limited bandwidth, routing overhead, quality of
service and security [3]. There are many routing protocols proposed for MANET, which can be classified into three
main categories: Proactive, Reactive and Hybrid. Proactive routing protocols attempt to maintain consistent, up-to-date
routing information from each node to every other node in the network, whereas Reactive routing protocols create just
routes in case there is a desire to send information by the source node. Once a route has been established, it is
maintained by a route maintenance procedure. Hybrid routing protocols has the advantage of combining both proactive
and reactive routing protocols and overcome their shortcomings [4].
This paper is structured as follows: Section II present the type of Wireless networks, Section III discusses the
characteristics of MANET, Section IV investigates some of the application for MANET, Section V discuss in details
the main challenge of MANET, Section VI present advantages of MANET, Section VII present disadvantages of
MANET and section VIII investigates the routing protocols of MANET.

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2. WIRELESS NETWORKS

Wireless networks allow flexible connection between clients who are in various places. furthermore, the network can be
expanded anywhere or building without a wired connection between the clients. Wireless networks are split into two
kinds: Infrastructure networks and Ad Hoc networks (infrastructure less) [5], as can be seen in Figure 1.
Wireless Networks

Infrastructure Networks

Ad-Hoc Networks

Figure 1: Wireless Networks Categories

2.1 Infrastructure Networks
This kind of infrastructure wireless network relies on the third fixed party and in this architecture which allows the
wireless stations to communicate between themselves as seen in Figure 2.An Access Point (AP) acts as a central
coordinator between all nodes. Any node can join the network through AP. Also, AP organizes the connection between
the Basic Set Services (BSSs) in order to make the route ready when it is needed. When a source node wants to make a
communication with a destination node, the source node tells the base station about that. In spite of that, one
shortcoming of using an infrastructure network is the large overhead of maintaining the routing tables [5].

Figure 2: Infrastructure networks

2.2 Infrastructure less Networks or Ad Hoc Networks
This kind of network is understood as Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) which can make correspondence with one
another without the assistance from centralized administrator. That is the wireless ad hoc network which is a
decentralized type of wireless network. In other words, the network is ad hoc since it does not depend on a preexisting
infrastructure, such as routers in wired networks or access points in managed (infrastructure) wireless networks. Ad
Hoc networks do not have a fixed topology or a central coordination point. Therefore, the source node and the
destination node can communicate with each other by sending and receiving packets which is more sophisticated than
infrastructure networks [5], as can be seen in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Mobile Ad Hoc Network

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3. CHARACTERISTICS OF MANETS
MANET has some characteristics that make it popularized everywhere everytime. These characteristics that are
desirable in Ad-Hoc Routing protocols [6] [7] [8] [9] are as follows:
3.1Distributed operation
There is no background network for the central control of the network operations. The control of the network is
distributed between the nodes. The nodes that participate in a MANET should cooperate with each other and
communicate among themselves and each node functions as a relay as needed, to fulfill specific functions such as
routing and security.
3.2Multi hop routing
If a node wants to send information to another nodes which is outside of its communication domain, the packet has to
resend through one or more intermediate nodes.
3.3 Autonomous terminal
In MANET, every mobile node is an independent node. It can perform two tasks that are as a host and a router.
3.4Dynamic topology
In MANET, the network topology may randomly change and at unpredictable time. The nodes are free to move
arbitrarily in the network domain with various speeds. Therefore, The nodes in the MANET dynamically establish
routing between themselves as they travel around, forming their own network.
3.5Light-weight terminals
In maximum cases, the nodes at MANET are mobile with less CPU capability, low power storage and small memory
size, so that the people can take it everywhere.
3.6Shared Physical Medium
The wireless communication medium is characterized as accessible to any entity with the proper equipment and
adequate resources. Accordingly, access to the channel cannot be limited.

4. APPLICATIONS OF MANETS
The MANET is nowadays so popularized that it has many applications in several fields in the practical life. The
following are the main applications for MANET [6] [9] [10]:
4.1Tactical Networks
MANET has many uses in the army. Some of these usages are in the military communication and operations among
army units. Moreover, it is used in the automated battlefield.
4.2Emergency services
MANET is used in many operations at emergency time. For example, it is used in search and rescue operations. When
disasters occurs, MANET becomes significant in that casualties discovery and rescue. It is also useful in the case of
environmental disasters, for it replaces the fixed infrastructure. It is also used in policing and fire fighting. It is useful
in medical area, because it supports doctors and nurses in hospitals.
4.3Commercial and civilian Environment
MANET is used in the commercial and civilian environment. It is used in the E-commerce such as electronic payments
anytime and anywhere environments. It is also useful in business for the purpose of dynamic database access by
mobiles and offices . it is very important in the vehicular services, because it is used as road or accident guidance and
it is used in transmission of road and weather conditions, taxi cab network, and inter-vehicle networks. In addition, it
is used in sports stadiums, trade fairs, and shopping malls. It service as networks of visitors at airports.
4.4Home and enterprises Networking
MANET functions as home/office wireless networking. It is used for exchange data in the conferences and meeting
rooms. It is used as personal area networks (PAN) and Personal networks (PN). It is also used as networks at
construction sites.
4.5Educations
MANET is of huge importance in the educational section. It is inevitable in the universities and campus settings. It is
urgently required in virtual classrooms. In addition, it is used in ad hoc communications during meetings or lectures.
4.6Entertainment
MANET is used in many entertainment application such as: Multi-user games. It is used also in Wireless P2P
networking, Outdoor internet access , Robotic pets as well as Theme parks .
4.7Sensor network
MANET is required in home applications such as smart sensors and actuators embedded in consumer electronics. It is
useful in body area networks (BAN). It is also used for the purpose of data tracking of environmental conditions,
animal movements, and chemical/biological detection.

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4.8Context aware services

MANET is useful in the follow-on services like call-forwarding and mobile workspace. Moreover, it is used in
information services such as location specific services, time dependent services. It is used in the touristic sector for
exchanging information.
4.9Coverage extension
MANET is used for the purpose of extending cellular network access. It is also used for linking up with the Internet,
intranets, etc.

5. CHALLENGES OF MANETS
Is spite of the characteristics which the MANET has, it is not free from some challenges that have to be overcome.
MANETs have been popular field of study during the last few years. Almost every aspect of the network has been
explored in one way or another at different level of problem. The most important challenges of the MANET are
mentioned bellow: [6] [9] [10]
5.1 Limited bandwidth
One of the challenges of the MANET is that the Wireless link continues to have significantly lower capacity than
infrastructure networks. Moreover, the realized throughput of wireless communication after accounting for the effect of
multiple access such as fading, noise, and interference conditions, etc., is often much less than a radios maximum
transmission rate.
5.2 Dynamic topology
In MANET, dynamic topology membership may shake the trust relationship among nodes. The trust may also be
weakened if some nodes are detected as compromised.
5.3Routing Overhead
In wireless ad hoc networks, nodes often alter their position within network. Thus, some stale routes are produced in
the routing table which results in unnecessary routing overhead.
5.4Hidden terminal problem
In the MANET, the hidden terminal problem refers to the collision of packets at a receiving node because of the
simultaneous transmission of those nodes that are not within the direct transmission range of the sender, but are within
the transmission range of the receiver.
5.5Packet losses due to transmission errors
Ad hoc wireless networks experiences a much higher packet loss owing to some factors such as increased collisions,
the presence of hidden terminals, presence of interference, uni-directional links, frequent path breaks which are caused
by mobility of nodes.
5.6Mobility-induced route changes
The network topology in an ad hoc wireless network is highly dynamic because of the movement of nodes. Therefore,
an continuous session suffers frequent path breaks. This situation often results in frequent route changes.
5.7Battery constraints
MANET suffers from the shortcoming of the battery constraints. Devices which are used in these networks suffer
restrictions on the power source in order to maintain portability, size and weight of the device.
5.8Security threats
MANET suffers from a particular security problems. It also has the reliability problem due to the limited wireless
transmission range. The nature of wireless mobile ad hoc (MANETs) brings about new security challenges to the
network design. As the wireless medium is vulnerable to eavesdropping and ad hoc network functionality is established
through node cooperation, mobile ad hoc networks are intrinsically subjected to numerous security attacks.
5.9Quality of Service (QoS)
The quality of service is considered one of the most significant challenges of MANET because of its mobility
environment. The inherent stochastic feature of communications quality in a MANET makes it difficult to provide
fixed guarantees on the services offered to a device. An adaptive QoS has to be fulfilled over the conventional resource
reservation to support the multimedia services
5.10Inter-networking
In addition to the communication within an ad hoc network, communication between MANET and a fixed network is
considered a challenge. Inter-networking between MANET and fixed networks (mainly IP based) is often expected in
many cases. The coexistence of routing protocols in such a mobile device is taken to be a challenge for the harmonious
mobility management.

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5.11Location-aided Routing
The routing is spatially oriented and limited, because location-aided routing uses positioning information to define
associated regions. This is analogous to associatively-oriented and restricted broadcast in ABR.

6. ADVANTAGE OF MANET
MANET [6] [8] [10] enjoys several advantages which are summed up bellow
They provide access to information and services irrespective of geographic position.
Independent from central network administration.
Self-configuring network, nodes are also function as routers.
Less expensive as compared to wired network.
Scalableaccommodates the addition of more nodes.
Advanced Flexibility.
Robust owing to decentralize administration.
The network can be established at any place and time
It can be established easily and fast and without pulling cables through walls and ceiling .
It has increased reliability due to multiple paths.

7. DISADVANTAGE OF MANET
Although MANET has several advantages, it suffers from some of the disadvantages the most important of which are
mentioned bellow [11]:
Some security protocol in the network is not working properly in the ad-hoc
If any malicious nodes with in entire network it is hard to find the malicious
There is some good protocol in the wired network but it is tough to implement in the wireless node

8. ROUTING PROTOCOLS
Routing is the operation of selecting paths in a network for moving a packets of data from source node to destination
node via number of nodes. A routing protocol consist of a routing algorithm with a set of rules that monitors the
operations of the network .The key issue in MANETs is that the routing protocols have to be able to respond quickly to
topological changes of the network [12]. Ad-Hoc network Routing Protocols can be divided to three kinds: Proactive ,
reactive and hybrid routing protocols [13]. as shown in figure 4.
MANET Routing Protocols

Proactive

Ractive

DSDV

AODV,DSR

Hybrid
ZRP

Figure: 4 Classification of MANET routing protocols

8.1Proactive Routing
Proactive or it is called table-driven routing protocols. In proactive routing, each node has to maintain one or many
tables for storage routing information, and any update in network topology need to be reflected by propagating change
throughout the network in order to maintain a proportionate network . Example of such schemes are the conventional
routing schemes: Destination sequenced distance vector (DSDV). They try to maintain consistent, up-to-date routing
information of the whole network. It reduce the delay in communication and allow nodes to quickly define which nodes
are present or reachable in the network [14].

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8.2Reactive Protocols
Reactive or it is called on-demand routing protocol, because they do not maintain routing information or routing
activity at the network nodes if there is no communication. If any node wants to transfer a packet to another node then
this protocol searches for the route in an on-demand manner and create the connection in order to transfer and receive
the packet. Examples of reactive routing protocols are the Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector routing (AODV) and
Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) [14].
8.3Hybrid Protocols
These protocols collect the good properties of both the pro-active and reactive protocols. It accumulate the group of
nodes into zones in the network topology. As the network is split into zones, the proactive approach is used within each
zone for maintenance of routing information. Reactive approach is used for routing packets between different zones.
ZRP is one of the types of the hybrid routing protocols [9].

9. CONCLUSIONS
The current paper includes seven sections which deal with the mobile ad hoc network which is includes: the types of
Wireless network, the characteristics, the applications, challenges, advantages, disadvantages, and routing protocol of
MANET. Mobile ad hoc network is decentralized, self-organize, anywhere, anytime network, and provides cheap
communications. It is called infrastructure less nature. This paper conducts a survey of characteristics of MANET,
various application of the mobile ad hoc network and several challenges as there are still many challenges confronting
wireless ad hoc networks. It also presents a brief but sound account of the advantages and disadvantages of the
MANET. This paper also presents the classification of MANET routing protocols: proactive, reactive and hybrid of
routing protocols.

References
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[12] E. Edwin Lawrence and Dr.R.Latha, A Comparative Study of Routing Protocols for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks,
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AUTHOR
Abdalftah Kaid Said Ali has completed M.Tech in Information Engineering from Aleppo UniversitySyria in 2011 and B.Tech degree in Engineering of Computers and controls from Sanaa UniversityYemen in 1997. And know Ph.D researcher at S. G. G.S. Institute of Engineering & Technology.
affiliated to S.R.T.M. University, Nanded, Mahrarashtra, India. His interests area is wireless
Networking, Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.
Uday V. Kulkarni, Ph.D. (SRTMUN), MIET, AMIETE, LMISTE, Professor, Department of
Computer Science and Engineering, S. G. G. S. Institute of Engineering and Technology, Vishnupuri,
Nanded - 431606, Maharashtra, India. Cell: 009325612705; Land line: 02462-269195, Fax: 02462229236

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