Abstract: Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) as well as Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) suffer from various challenges like low bandwidth, overhead and velocity of nodes. This research contribution is the characterization study between MANETs and WSNs environment with respect to various routing protocols. This study investigates the routing protocols corresponding to packet delivery ratio, routing overhead, throughput and average to end-to-end delay. For MANETs, three protocols AODV, DSDV and TORA are selected and a performance study is done. The AODV perform better in MANETs and given better output, but performance of TORA is very poor and not reliable for MANETs. For WSNs, four protocols AODV, DSDV, TORA and LEACH are selected and evaluated. The AODV and LEACH both perform better but AODV is less reliable than LEACH because the result of AODV is fluctuated but LEACH shows stability. It is concluded that AODV shows better performance in both environments compared to DSDV and TORA. But average end-to-end delay is much higher in WSNs compared to MANETs.

Keywords: Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), Routing Protocols, Simulation, Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR).