effect of 3 key factors on average end to end delay and jitter in manet

A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is a self-configuring infrastructure-less network of mobile devices connected by wireless links where each node or mobile device is independent to move in any desired direction and thus the links keep moving from one node to another. In such a network, the mobile nodes are equipped with CSMA/CA (carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance) transceivers and communicate with each other via radio. In MANETs, routing is considered one of the most difficult and challenging tasks. Because of this, most studies on MANETs have focused on comparing protocols under varying network conditions. But to the best of our knowledge no one has studied the effect of other factors on network performance indicators like throughput, jitter and so on, revealing how much influence a particular factor or group of factors has on each network performance indicator. Thus, in this study the effects of three key factors, i.e. routing protocol, packet size and DSSS rate, were evaluated on key network performance metrics, i.e. average delay and average jitter, as these parameters are crucial for network performance and directly affect the buffering requirements for all video devices and downstream networks.