Analyzing Performance of Zone Routing Protocol by Varying Node Density and Transmission Range Vishal Polara #1 , Pooja Bhatt *2 #1 Department of information technology BVM engineering College, Vallabh Vidya Nagar, India #2 Department of computer engineering IPCOWALA institute of Engineering and Technology, dharmaj, India Abstract— Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of mobile nodes that are arbitrarily located so that the interconnections between nodes are dynamically changing. In MANET mobile nodes forms a temporary network without the use of any existing network infrastructure or centralized administration. Each node participating in the network acts both as host and a router and must therefore is willing to forward packets for other nodes. For this purpose, a routing protocol is needed. A routing protocol is used to find routes between mobile nodes to facilitate communication within the network. The Zone Routing Protocol (ZRP) is a hybrid routing protocol for MANET which combines the advantages of the proactive and reactive approaches by maintaining an up-to-date topological map of a zone centered on each node. I am going to do simulation based study in order to analyze performance of ZRP protocol and I am Using Network Simulator (NS-2) tool to analysis performance of ZRP and doing sensitivity analysis by varying node density and transmission range on different parameter like throughput, average end to end delay, and Normalized Routing load. Keywords— Routing Protocols, ZRP, Proactive Routing, Reactive Routing, Hybrid Routing I. INTRODUCTION The wireless network can be classified into two types: Infrastructure or Infrastructure less. In Infrastructure wireless networks, the mobile node can move while communicating, the base stations are fixed and as the node goes out of the range of a base station, it gets into the range of another base station. In Infrastructure less or Ad Hoc wireless network, the mobile node can move while communicating, there are no fixed base stations and all the nodes in the network act as routers. The mobile nodes in the Ad Hoc network dynamically establish routing among themselves to form their own network ‘on the fly’. Ad-hoc networks are also capable of handling topology changes and malfunctions in nodes. It is fixed through network reconfiguration. The routing protocol has two main functions, selection of routes for various source- destination pairs and the delivery of messages to their correct destination. The second function is conceptually straightforward using a variety of protocols and data structures (routing tables). This report is focused on selecting and finding routes. This paper contains all the detail about ZRP protocol and the result generate from the experiment with conclusion and also mentions the parameter use for generating the result. II. OVERVIEW OF PROTOCOL Proactive routing uses excess bandwidth to maintain routing information, while reactive routing involves long route request delays. Reactive routing also inefficiently floods the entire network for route determination [2]. The Zone Routing Protocol (ZRP) aims to address the problems by combining the best properties of both approaches. ZRP can be classed as a hybrid reactive/proactive routing protocol. [12] In an ad-hoc network, it can be assumed that the largest part of the traffic is directed to nearby nodes. Therefore, ZRP reduces the proactive scope to a zone centered on each node. In a limited zone, the maintenance of routing information is easier. Further, the amount of routing information that is never used is minimized. Still, nodes farther away can be reached with reactive routing. Since all nodes proactively store local routing information, route requests can be more efficiently performed without querying all the network nodes. [12]. Despite the use of zones, ZRP has a flat view over the network. In this way, the organizational overhead related to hierarchical protocols can be avoided. Hierarchical routing protocols depend on the strategic assignment of gateways or landmarks, so that every node can access all levels, especially the top level. Nodes belonging to different subnets must send their communication to a subnet that is common to both nodes. This may congest parts of the network. ZRP can be categorized as a flat protocol because the zones overlap. Hence, optimal routes can be detected and network congestion can be reduced. Further, the behavior of ZRP is adaptive. The behavior depends on the current configuration of the network and the behavior of the users. A. IntrAzone Routing Protocol (IARP) “A node’s routing zone is defined as a collection of nodes whose minimum distance in hops from the node in question is no greater than a parameter referred to as zone radius”. In ZRP, a node proactively maintains the route to the destination within its zone radius. Zone is defined in Vishal Polara et al, / (IJCSIT) International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technologies, Vol. 5 (3) , 2014, 2776-2782 www.ijcsit.com 2776