The Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Protocol: An Analytical Model of the Route Acquisition Process

Ad hoc networking research suffers from the lack of meaningful and realistic models to describe the route acquisition process of ad hoc routing protocols. There is a strong need for such models to be able to perform realistic calculations supporting important yet difficult tasks, such as performance estimation and protocol scalability analysis. Based on existing work for ideal source routing we formulate and validate an analytical model to match the route acquisition process executed by the Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol. This allows us to predict the probability density function of estimated route lengths, a powerful metric for characterization of the network behavior. We further extend our study to include multiple refinements to the basic AODV protocol. The instantiation and validation of the model is completed by means of an experimental analysis.