Modeling of topology evolutions and implication on proactive routing overhead in MANETs

We present a mathematical framework for quantifying the impact of node mobility on the overhead of proactive routing protocols in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). We focus on MANETs in which nodes move randomly. The analytical model we introduce models signaling overhead as a function of stability of topology, and characterizes the statistical distribution of topology evolutions. Although we could apply our analytical framework to any proactive routing scheme, we use the OLSR protocol as an example of our model, because it is a leading example of proactive routing for ad hoc networking. We corroborate the accuracy of the results obtained analytically by means of results obtained with discrete-event simulations using the same parameters adopted in the analytical model.