A Novel Approach of Link Availability Estimation for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks have inherently dynamic topologies. Due to the distributed, multi-hop nature of these networks, random mobility of nodes affects not only the availability of radio links between particular node pairs, but also impedes the reliability of communication paths. Therefore, to optimize the performance of existing network protocols, it is important to be able to give an accurate prediction of the future link status within a random mobility environment. In this paper, a novel approach is introduced to derive analytical expression of link availability for mobile ad hoc networks. By a rough estimation of the initial distance between two nodes, the prediction algorithm presented in this paper is able to accurately estimate link availability for a given short period of time. Simulation results are reported to verify the correctness of our approach.