Effect of Network Parameters on Hop Count Estimation of Mobile Ad Hoc Network

Several studies on mobile ad hoc network focuses on issues like mobility; protocol; scalability; hop count estimation; capacity constraints and many more. A surplus of algorithms had been developed by several researchers to evaluate the number of hops between the transmitting-receiving node pair especially for static ad hoc networks. However, few researchers have estimated the hop count even for topologies that do not establish connectivity. Hence, in this paper, an algorithm is developed to count the number of hops between the transmitting node and the receiving node considering for all probable topologies of a only connected static network. The proposed approach models the nodes to be randomly distributed in the defined simulation boundary. The model considers network modelling, finding the connectivity between the mobile nodes and then the estimation of the average hop count along with node movements. The proposed algorithm estimates the hop count of topologies of all connected network. In addition to above, the proposed algorithm helps in understanding the effect of network parameters on the hop count distance of the mobile ad hoc networks. The simulation results depict that the number of hops monotonically increases with network size, transmission range and decreases with coverage area.