Abstract
This paper presents an investigation on the optimum number of neighbors for mobile ad hoc networks
(MANETs). The MANETs are self-configuring and self-organizing networks. In such a network, energyconstrained mobile nodes share limited bandwidth to send their packets to the destinations. The mobile nodes
have a limited transmission range and they rely on their neighbors to deliver their packets. Hence, the mobile
nodes must be associated with the required (i.e., optimum) number of neighbors. As the number of neighbors
is varied, a trade-off exists between the network connectivity and available bandwidth per mobile node. To
investigate this issue, we consider Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) as the routing protocol and IEEE 802.11
as the MAC layer protocol in this work. We consider both static and dynamic scenarios in this work. We
simulated the ad hoc networks via network simulator (NS-2) and the simulation results show that there exists
an optimum number of neighbors for the static case. We also show that mobility has a grave impact on the
performance of the MANETs in terms of network throughput, end-to-end delay, energy consumption, and
packet loss. Hence, we need to increase the number of neighbors under mobility conditions. However, there
is no global optimum number of neighbors for the mobility case.
Description
Wireless networking has been an active research focus since the early days of the packet radio
network introduced by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) [1]. Recent
developments in wireless devices have made laptop computers, personal digital assistants (PDA),
pagers, and cellular telephones portable. Now, users can carry these devices to any place at any
time. Hence, there is a need for a network that can be deployed at any place at any time without
any infrastructure support. In some cases, an infrastructure-based network is hard to build.
Networks used by the soldiers on the battlefield are worthwhile to mention here. In some cases,
infrastructures may not exist due to natural calamities such as cyclones, tsunami, and tornados.
Hence, there is always a need for setting up a temporary network among a group of users without
any pre-existing infrastructure and centralized administration. Mobile Ad hoc Networks
(MANETs) are considered suitable solutions for these kinds of temporary networks. MANETs
consist of a group of mobile nodes, which have limited battery and limited processing power.
MANETs are self-organizing and self-configuring networks and they can be deployed without any
infrastructure support. Numerous groundbreaking applications have been proposed based on
MANETs
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