Mobile Ad-Hoc networks (MANETs) can be classified as Decentralized, Independent and Self- Organizing dynamic networks of intellectual movable nodes. In such networks, devices are connected by provisional wireless links. Dynamic topology imposes challenges in developing an efficient routing protocol, for enabling successful communication between mobile devices. Based on the nature of working, proactive & reactive protocols are the two broadly classified categories of routing protocols. This paper presents, relative experimental analysis of proactive routing protocols viz., Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR) and its variant (Kenji Yamada et al., 2010) with Cooperative Multi-Point Relay (MPR) Selection. To compare OLSR and its variant protocol, the Network Simulator- 2.35 is used to carry out numerous simulations, on arbitrary scenarios, by varying the number of network nodes & mobility of nodes. As per the simulation outcomes, the OLSR with a cooperative MPR selection has outperformed the traditional OLSR protocol in static scenarios or when the network load has been varied. On the contrary, the traditional OLSR protocol has performed better in mobile scenarios. But, as demonstrated from various experimentations, it exhibits higher Routing Overheads as compared to its variant protocol. Further, on the basis of simulation results, efforts can be made in the direction of performance optimization of OLSR and its variant protocol, to improve its performance in highly mobile scenarios as well, keeping in view other performance metrics.

Mobile ad-hoc networks are autonomous networks of intelligent mobile nodes. Designing an efficient routing protocol with goal efficient route establishment is still a burning research issue. Routing protocols are broadly classified into proactive and reactive protocols on the basis of their nature of working. In this paper, we present comparative simulation analysis of two proactive protocols namely, Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) and Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV). Simulations have been carried out multiple times using Network Simulator-2.35 (NS-2.35), on random scenario patterns and compared in two environments (OLSR and DSDV) by varying the network size and mobility of nodes. We have patched and installed OLSR protocol on NS-2.35 as it’s not available as a part of NS-2.35 installation. The simulation results indicate that, OLSR perform better than DSDV protocol for application oriented metrices such as packet delivery fraction, packet loss and end-to-end delay. But, Routing Overheads is significantly consistently higher for OLSR protocol in all the cases considered, which is proven experimentally. Furthermore, based upon the simulation results, work can be done in the direction of improving the performance of the OLSR protocol to make it a choice of proactive protocol for large and denser network.