D. Rex Alex Paul, M. Prem Kumar
A fundamental issue arising in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) is the selection of the optimal path between any two nodes. Ensuring a data path to be valid for sufficiently longer period of time is a very difficult problem in MANET due to its highly dynamic nature. A method that has been advocated to improve routing efficiency is to select the most stable path so as to reduce the latency and the overhead due to route reconstruction. In this work, we study both the availability and the duration probability of a routing path that is subject to link failures caused by node mobility. In particular, we focus on the case where the network nodes move according to the Random Direction model, and we derive both exact and approximate (but simple) expressions of these probabilities. Through our results, we study the problem of selecting an optimal route in terms of path availability. Finally, we propose an approach to improve the efficiency of reactive routing protocols. We present an approach for MANET routing based on stability and hop-count, where the stability metric considered is the residual lifetime of a link. We view stability based routing not as a separate routing protocol but as an enhancement to a hop-count based routing protocol (e.g. DSR or AODV), so that the expected residual lifetime as well as hop count of a route are taken into account.