Evaluation of Average Communication Interruption Time in MANETs

MANET (Mobile Ad Hoc Networks) is turning to be the recommended way to interconnect mobile nodes (MNs) to Internet when they move away from networks structures. The Mobile IP agents used to permit MNs IP mobility may announce their presence either using a proactive or a reactive discovery approach, but when MNs handover between different MANET sub-networks, ongoing communications may become interrupted for a brief period of time. In this paper we evaluate the average communication interruption time as a function of different factors related to MN handover, especially the type of agent discovery. We found that the use of the proactive discovery approach produces the smallest communication interruption time.