An analysis of connectivity in a MANET of autonomous cooperative mobile agents under the Rayleigh fading channel

In this paper, we study the connectivity of a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) of autonomous cooperative mobile agents (e.g. mobile robots) under the Rayleigh fading channel. Connectivity is a critical performance parameter of cooperative robots deployed in real-time scenarios such as disaster and rescue scenarios. There are two major factors that affect the connectivity of the MANET. First, the mobility of the nodes causes the separation between any pair of nodes to fluctuate. Second, atmospheric condition and obstacles can cause the transmission range of the nodes to fluctuate. Based on these factors, stochastic analysis is performed to derive the connectivity probability. The connectivity probability represents the fraction of time that a node is connected to at least one other node. This probability is used to study the effect of mobility' and fading on the connectivity as the transmission range or number of nodes in the network varies. Such analytical results can form the basis of performance modeling of MANET routing protocols and network optimization.