Comparison of Stable Path Selection Strategies for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The strategies for selecting paths in stabilityoriented mobile ad hoc network routing protocols make use of the knowledge of either past or future topology changes. Here, we study the performance of different stable path selection strategies in terms of number of route transitions and average hop count per path vis-à-vis the optimums for these metrics computed under the same conditions of network topology changes. The strategies that make use of knowledge of past topology changes include that of selecting the most recently formed path, the longest existing path, and the path having least sum of the age of its constituent links. The strategies making use of the knowledge of future topology changes include the mobility prediction mechanism [8] and the locationupdate broadcast based look-ahead mechanism [7]. Simulation results indicate strategies based on knowledge of future topology changes perform far better compared to those based on knowledge of past topology changes.