Broadcast Based Reactive Routing Protocols in MANET:A Review

MANET is a self configuring network composed of mobile devices or nodes without any fixed infrastructure. In a MANET all node acts as a router so that they can be source as well as forwarders of traffic. Many different routing protocols have been developed in recent years. These include Proactive routing protocol, Reactive routing protocol and Hybrid routing protocol. Broadcasting is the way of service discovery, device paging, and also data transfer in MANET. It is the only method in which a source node sends a message to all other nodes in such a network. Broadcasting provides important control and route establishment functionality for several unicast and multicast protocols. Broadcasting poses more challenges than in wired networks due to node mobility and limited system resources. Broadcasting a packet to the entire network is a basic operation and has extensive applications in MANET. In this paper, we present a compositional study of various broadcasting techniques and provide a brief overview of different reactive routing protocols for MANET.