MANET studies as experimental artifacts: a PRISMA-guided review of contemporary evaluation orientation, reporting completeness and reproducibility

Abstract

Experimental evaluation is central to MANET research, yet performance claims are often derived from studies that use heterogeneous and inconsistently reported evaluation setups, limiting cross-study comparability, reproducibility, and interpretability. This paper presents a PRISMA-guided systematic review of MANET evaluation practice published between 1 January 2020 and 12 August 2025, using an evidence-mapping and meta-research synthesis approach. Twenty studies were analyzed using a structured extraction template capturing evaluation orientation, experimental platform, mobility and scenario configuration, baseline selection, metric portfolios, and energy modeling practices. Methodological rigor was assessed using explicit indicators for validation reporting, statistical analysis reporting, and reproducibility support, with a derived rigor score summarizing reporting strength across studies and over time. The results provide study-attributed evidence maps and diagnostic summaries that quantify dominant evaluation orientations, heterogeneity in evaluation stacks, and uneven disclosure of reproducibility-critical details. The paper derives a practitioner-oriented checklist that specifies minimum reporting and evaluation design elements needed to support transparent and comparable MANET experiments. Future research should develop and validate community-aligned reporting and benchmarking standards that reduce evaluation-stack ambiguity and strengthen cross-study synthesis in MANET research.