The Impacts of Weak Links on Routing Process in Large Scale Multi-Hop Networks

In wireless multi-hop networks, especially large scale wireless multi-hop networks, the feasibility of routing strategies is of vital significance. However, the basic function of routing strategies, the ability of finding a path from source to destination, is seldom researched. In this paper, we apply a Markov chain to model the routing discovery process of wireless multi-hop networks with arbitrary routing strategies. Taking the fading characteristics of wireless channel into consideration, we analyze the impacts of weak links on routing algorithms in wireless multi-hop networks. The probability of routing success and the distribution of hop count are discussed in detail and their close-form solutions are given. Simulation and theoretical results show that, with the increase of the network scale, the impact of weak links gets stronger and even makes the routing strategies unusable. Our research has pointed out the relations between the performance of routing strategies and the network scale under the impact of weak links. The results have important significance for routing strategy designing and network planning.