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A Comparative study of MANET and

VANET Environment
Arzoo Dahiya , Dr.R.K.Chauhan

Abstract-On demand set up, fault tolerance and unconstrained connectivity are a couple of advantages ,that why mobile computing
continues to enjoy rapid growth. In last three decade ,tremendous improvement is made in research area of wireless adhoc network
and now a days ,one of the most attractive research topic is inter vehicle communication i.e. realization of mobile adhoc network
.VANETs have been recently attracting an increasing attention from both industry as well as research communities .A rich literature
in MANET exists, but the availability of traffic data and vehicle equipment motivate the researchers to explore the special
characteristics of VANET. In this paper we survey and compare from the literature ,the environment for MANET and VANET. Finally
we share a collection of useful references.

Index Terms-MANET, VANET, routing ,VN ,ITS etc.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Introduction In 1999, U.S. federal communication Commission

MANETs consist of mobile/semi mobile nodes with
no existing pre-established infrastructure. They
connect themselves in a decentralized, self-
organizing manner and also establish multi hop
routes. If the mobile nodes are vehicles then this
type of network is called VANET(vehicular ad-hoc
network). One important property that distinguishes
MANET from VANET is that nodes move with
higher avg. speed and number of nodes is
assumed to be very large. Vehicular networks
consist of vehicles and Road Side Units (RSU)
equipped with radios. Plummeting cost of
electronic components and permanent willingness
of manufacturers to increase road safety and to
differentiate themselves from their competitors
vehicles are becoming “Computer on Wheels”
rather than “Computer N/W on Wheels”.
Convergence of forces from both the public and
private sector implies that in not-too-distant future
we are likely to see the total birth of vehicular n/w.
Ms.Arzoo Dahiya isworking with Department of
I.T.,Lingaya’s University,Faridabad.
Dr.R.K.Chauhan is Chairman,Deptt.Of Computer
Science,Kurukshetra University,Kurukshetra.
(FCC) allocated a block of spectrum in 5.850 to
5.925 GHz band for applications primarily intended
to enhance the safety of our networks on roads
systems. In fact BMW, Fiat, Renault and some
other organizations have united to develop a car-
to-car communication consortium, dedicated
precisely to impose Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and
Vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communication,
vehicle share safety related information and access
location based services[1]. The wealth of
information that could be obtained from vehicular
networks is quite enormous, ranging from location
and speed of emergency alerts and request for
roadside assistance. In particular, many envisioned
safety related applications require that the vehicles
continuously broadcast their current position and
speed in so called heart beat messages. This
messaging increases the awareness of vehicles
about their neighbors’ whereabouts and warns
drivers off dangerous situations. But the very
richness of information also threatens to cause
deployment to come to a grinding halt if there is
adverse consumer reaction to technology.
In this paper we start the discussion with the
introduction of vehicular adhoc networks. Next we
specify various unique characteristics of VANET
that differentiate it from MANET. We then examine
routing techniques for both MANET and VANET
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and make a comparison study. Finally we end with
the discussion and few useful references.
2. Unique VANET characteristics and
comparison with MANET
2.1 Unique VANET characteristics
Though Vehicular network share common
characteristics with conventional ad-hoc sensor
network such as self organized and lack of central
control. VANET have unique challenges that
impact the design of communication system and its
protocol security[2]. These challenges include-
1. Potentially high number of nodes. Regarding
VANETs as the technical basis for envisioned
Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) we expect
that a large portion of vehicles will be equipped
with communication capabilities for vehicular
communication. Taking additionally potential road-
side units into account, VANET needs to be
scalable with a very high number of nodes.
2. High mobility and frequent topology
changes. Nodes potentially move with high speed.
Hence in certain scenarios such as when vehicle
pass each other, the duration of time that remains
for exchange of data packets is rather small. Also,
intermediate nodes in a wireless multi-hop chain of
forwarding nodes can move quickly.
Sr.No. Parameters
1. Cost of
production
2. Change in
n/w
topology
3. Mobility
4. Node
density
5. Bandwidth
6. Range
7. Node
Lifetime
 
 
3. High application requirement on data
delivery. Important VANET applications are for
traffic safety to avoid road accidents; potentially
including safety-of-life. These applications have
high requirements with respect to real time and
reliability. An end-to-end delay of seconds can
render a safety information meaningless.
4. No confidentiality of safety information. For
safety application the information contained in a
message is of interest for all road users and hence
not confidential.
5. Privacy. Communication capabilities in vehicles
might reveal information about the driver/user,
such as identifier, speed, position and mobility
pattern. Despite the need of message
authentication and non-repudiation of safety
messages, privacy of users and drivers should be
respected in particular location privacy and
anonymity.
2.2 Comparison of MANET and VANET
Mobile Ad-hoc networks and Vehicular Ad-hoc
networks are very much similar on various
technical grounds but following are some
parameters on the basis of which we can contrast
both environments.
MANET VANET
Cheap Expensive
Slow Frequent and very fast
Low High
Sparse Dense and frequently variable
Hundred Thousand kps
kps
Upto Upto 500m
100m
Depends Depend on lifetime of vehicle
on power
resource
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8. Multihop Available Weakly available

routing
9. Reliability Medium High
10. Moving Random Regular
pattern of
nodes
11. Addressing Attribute Location based
scheme based
12. Position Using Using GPS,RADAR
acquisition ultrasonic

Table1: Comparison of MANET and VANET[20]

3. Routing Techniques for MANET and  E.g. DSR ,

hitting the reality for VANET AODV,LMR,TORA,LAR,
ARA,FORP,CBRP
3.1 Routing Protocols for MANET  Hierarchical
 E.g. ZRP,ZHLS,SLURP
MANETs have numerous applications and each of  Position Based
such application involve different scenarios with  LAR
movement pattern, traffic rate and density  Power Aware
dependent on nature of interaction among the  ABR
participants and environment. Active research is  Signal Stability
been done in the area of exploiting the routing for  SSA
mobile networks but based on different application  Multicast
areas the classification is very vast. Routing  M-AODV
techniques can be on the basis of unicast or
multicast OR topology based OR QoS based OR And many more…….
power awareness based OR broadcast based etc.
As discussed above , the operational principles of Many protocols have been proposed within the
both VANET and MANET are same to some framework of internet engineering task force(IETF)
approach. Thus most of the routing strategies are for MANET.
taken from MANET but due to very high mobility
and node’s unpredictable behavior routing In Flat, Pro-active routing protocols, such as
protocols for MANET are not suited for vehicular Destination Sequence Distance
communication environment. So first of all we Vector(DSDV)[7],routes updates are periodically
discuss some not all routing and summarize their performed regardless of network load, network size
advantages and disadvantages. and bandwidth. Major point of these protocols is
that nodes maintain a constantly updated
Classification of current routing protocols[3]- understanding of network topology. reactive or on-
demand routing are designed to reduce the
MANET Routing Protocol overhead by maintaining information for active
routes only at the expense of delay due to route
 Flat search. This means that routes are determined and
 Pro-active(table-driven) maintained for nodes that require to send data to
 E.g.OLSR, particular destination. Route discovery occurs by
DSDV,WRP,GSR,FSR,S flooding a route request(RREQ) and route
TAR,DREAM,CGSRHSR response(RREP) packets through the network.
, This scheme is significant for Ad hoc environment
 Reactive(On demand) since battery power is conserved both by not
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sending the advertisements and by not needing to
receive them (A host could otherwise reduce its
power usage by putting itself in to the sleep or
standby mode when they are not busy with other
tasks. Link breakage is reported by report error
message(RERR).
But since routes in vehicular networks are fragile,
such protocols spend much time in discovering the
routes. So they are not suited for VANET.
Second category is hierarchical or hybrid such as
Zone Routing Protocol(ZRP)[8], divides the
network into different zones. Intrazone is
performed by pro-active protocol. Inter-zone is
performed by reactive protocol. The advantage of
this protocols is that it has reduced the
communication overhead if we compare to
traditional proactive protocols. Although they
present scalable route strategy for large scale
environment but their implementation has not
gained much popularity and not suited for VANET.
that they conserve the bandwidth. but
disadvantage is that each node is required to carry
a GPS.
In signal stability protocols such as SSA[10],selects
routes based on location stability and signal
strength. In this approach routes stays longer thus
fewer route construction is needed. the
disadvantage of this protocol is that when route
failure occurs no attempt is made to recover the
route delaying the route discovery.
In last but not the least category of multicast
routing e.g. M-AODV[11] i.e. multicast extension of
AODV .It allows each node in the network to send
out multicast data packets and the multicast data
packets are broadcast when propagating along the
multicast group tree.

Position based routing such as Location Aided

Routing(LAR)[9], require that information about
physical position of the participating nodes in the
networks thus by reducing the overhead of
traditional flooding. Advantage of such technique is
3.2 Summary of MANET routing protocols[4]

Table-2

Protocol Routing Frequency of Feature Advantage/Disadvantage

Structure updates
DSDV Flat Periodic updates Loop free Loop free/high overhead
WRP Flat Periodic updates Loop free Loop free/memory overhead
GSR Flat Periodic and Localized updates Localized updates/high
local updates memory overhead
FSR Flat Periodic and Controlled Reduces control
local updates frequency of overhead/reduces accuracy
updates
STAR Hierarchical Conditional Minimizes control Low memory
updates overhead overhead/requires GPS
DREAM Flat Mobility based Controlled updates Low control overhead/cluster
updates maintenance
HSR Hierarchical Periodic updates Low control Disadv. is location
overhead management
Route metric Route maintained
method in
AODV Flat Freshest and Route table Adaptive to dynamic
shortest path topology/scalability problem
DSR Flat Shortest path Route cache Multiple routes/large delays
TORA Flat Shortest path Route table Multiple routes/temporary
loops
ABR Flat Strongest Route table Route stability/scalability
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associativity
SSA Flat Signal strength
LAR Flat Shortest path
ZRP Flat Shortest path
4. Routing Protocols for VANET
In a vehicular environment three possible types of
architectures are possible.See fig.1
Fig.1-source[12]
While it is all but impossible to come up with a
routing approach that can be suitable for all
VANET applications and can efficiently handle all
their inherent characteristics, attempts have been
made to develop some routing protocols
specifically designed for particular applications like
safety applications, content delivery in future
vehicular networks, provision of comfort
applications. Many routing techniques have been
proposed for traditional ad-hoc networks but due to
different characteristics of VN , they fail to fit in the
scenario. In this paper we classify the routing into
five categories-
4.1 Ad-hoc routing and modification for
VANET
As mentioned earlier MANET and VANET share
the same principles, thus most ad-hoc routing
protocols are applicable such as AODV and DSR.
however most of the studies have shown that both
these protocols suffer from highly dynamic nature
of nodes i.e. they give low communication
throughput. Thus little modification need to be
deployed to deal with dynamic mobility. for this two
algorithms were proposed by Namboodiri et
al.[13],to reduce the ill effects of route breakage as
faced in AODV .Two prediction based protocols are
PRAODV and PRAODV-M.PRAODV constructs
alternate routes before the end of estimated
lifetime while PRAODV-M selects maximum
predicted life time among multiple route options.
These two protocols showed great utility in
 
problem
Route table Route stability/large delays
Route cache Local route discovery/based
on source routing
Interzone/intrazone Less
tables commn.overhead/overlapping
zones
vehicular scenario regarding improvement in
packet delivery ratio.
4.2 Geographical Routing Geographical routing
or position based routing has been identified more
promising paradigm in VN. Two best known
protocols in literature are Greedy Perimeter
Stateless Routing(GPSR)[14] and Greedy
Perimeter Coordinator Routing(GPCR)[15].It works
best in open space scenarios with evenly
distributed nodes. It gave good results when
compared to DSR in highway scenario.GPCR
works on the principle that packet should always
be forwarded on a junction called co-ordinator. The
authors showed that GPCR has higher delivery
rate than GPSR. and slight increase in latency.
4.3 Cluster Based Routing
Cluster based routing protocol was first developed
by Jiang in 1999.Nodes of the wireless network are
divided into several disjoint clusters. Each cluster
elects one node as cluster head. These heads are
responsible for routing process.
Fig 2.Communication between two clusters using cluster
head.
Protocols were proposed based on cluster
mechanism for MANET but due to driver’s
intentions and high speed etc. were not suited for
VN. For vehicular specific environment two known
routing protocols in literature are Clustering for
open IVC Networks(COIN)[16] and Cluster Based
Flooding(CBR)[17]. COIN elects cluster head
based on vehicle dynamic and driver’s intention
rather than communication range or ID as in ad-
hoc networks and produced much more stable
structure.CBR works principally on location based
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theory sending location request LREQ and location
reply LREP msg. In total cluster based routing can
achieve good scalability for large networks but
extra overhead of formation of cluster and heads.
4.4 Broadcast Routing
Broadcasting technique is used for sharing traffic
emergency conditions, advertisements etc. the way
to achieve broadcasting is flooding and it is easy to
be implemented. But its performance drops quickly
as networks grows larger. Two well known routing
protocols are BROADCOMM[18] and Urban Multi-
hop Broadcast Protocol(UMB)[19].BROADCOMM
works on hierarchical structure and it outperforms
flooding algorithm.UMB overcome the problem of
hidden nodes and packet collision. This protocol
give high success rate for heavy traffic density and
packet load.
5.Conclusion
In this paper we discuss typical architectural
features of vehicular network and compare it with
traditional mobile ad-hoc network. Table 1 draws
an outline of MANET and VANET routing
principles. In general although this paper gives no
technically practical results but presents an overall
picture of different routing challenges that are
faced in vehicular environment and various routing
procedures followed in both the networks. We
believe this paper will be helpful for future designer
in vehicular communication networks.
6. References
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Vehicular Networks”, Poster presented at USENIX Security
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[3] Frank Kargl “Secure Routing for Vehicular Networks.”.
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08,germany 2005.
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Ms. Arzoo Dahiya is currently working as an Assistant
professor in I.T.Deptt,Lingaya’s University,Faridabad.
Prof. (Dr.) R. K. Chauhan is currently working as a
Chairman, Department of Computer Science and Application
in Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra. He has published
more than 70 research papers in International/National
Journal/Conference. He has guided 5 Ph.D. His research
interest includes Data Mining, DBMS and Networks.