Modeling Route Duration in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

An analytical model to estimate the time duration of routes formed by several intermediate nodes in MANETs is presented. Although there are works related to estimation of route duration, they only partially obtained analytical expressions. First, we approach the route duration problem by modeling a 3-node static case, source and destination (static) and one intermediate node (mobile). Then, a 3-node mobile case is analyzed. For both cases, we evaluate how long the route is valid. Finally, a K-node mobile case is presented. We conclude that the time duration of a route formed by N intermediate nodes can be accurately found from the minimum time duration of N separated 3-node routes. Simulations were developed using NS-2 to verify the proposed model. This work can be used to compute the signaling overhead during route-maintenance of routing protocols for MANETs and to adjust the maximum network size.