A Systematic Approach for Analyzing Hop count and Path Reliability of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

A mobile ad-hoc network is infrastructureless dynamic network that consists of collection of wireless mobile nodes which communicates with each other without the use of centralized network. The research on existing literature of such network show evidence of plenty of algorithms and models that can estimate hop count based on connectivity without considering mobility of the network. Therefore in this paper, an algorithm is proposed for evaluating the average hop count and illustrates the effect of hop count on path reliability for various scenario metrics such as network size, network coverage area, transmission range of the mobile nodes considering mobility of mobile nodes. The methodology uses Random Way Point Mobility Model to locate the spatial distribution of mobile nodes. Finally the simulated results are used to examine the network average hop count and path reliability through extensive simulations. The results show that the maximum path reliability with an optimum hop count can be obtained with suitable choice of network size within a selected coverage area of the networks that are operable in harsh environment.