  The high-level contribution of this paper is a simulation-based detailed
performance comparison of three different classes of on-demand routing
protocols for mobile ad hoc networks: stability-based routing, power-aware
routing and load-balanced routing. We choose the Flow-Oriented Routing protocol
(FORP), Min-Max Battery Cost Routing (MMBCR) and the traffic interference based
Load Balancing Routing (LBR) protocol as representatives of the stability-based
routing, poweraware routing and load-balancing routing protocols respectively.
FORP incurs the least number of route transitions; while LBR incurs the
smallest hop count and lowest end-to-end delay per data packet. Energy consumed
per data packet is the least for LBR, closely followed by MMBCR. FORP incurs
the maximum energy consumed per data packet, both in the absence and presence
of power control. Nevertheless, in the presence of power control, the
end-to-end delay per data packet and energy consumed per data packet incurred
by FORP are significantly reduced compared to the scenario without power
control. MMBCR is the most fair in terms of node usage and incurs the largest
time for first node failure. FORP tends to repeatedly use nodes lying on the
stable path and hence is the most unfair of the three routing protocols. FORP
also incurs the smallest value for the time of first node failure.
