Performance comparisons of ZRP and IZRP routing protocols for ad hoc wireless networks

An ad hoc wireless network has a dynamic nature that leads to constant changes in its network topology. As a consequence, the routing problem becomes more complex and challengeable, and it probably is the most addressed and studied problem in ad hoc networks. Based on the routing information update mechanism Ad hoc wireless networks routing protocols are classified into Proactive, Reactive and Hybrid Routing Protocols. Out of these, Hybrid Routing Protocol combines the best futures of the first two categories. The Zone Routing Protocol (ZRP) is one of the hybrid routing protocols in which every network node proactively maintaining routing information about its routing zone, while reactively acquiring routes to destinations beyond the routing zone. In this paper, we proposed the Independent Zone Routing Protocol (IZRP) an enhancement of the Zone Routing Protocol which allows adaptive and distributed configuration for the optimal size of each node´s routing zone, on per-node basis. We demonstrate the performance of IZRP with various performance metrics. Furthermore, we compared the performance of IZRP and ZRP by considering performance metrics Packet Delivery Fraction, Normalized Routing Overhead and End-to-End Delay.