Reliability Evaluation of Environmentally Affected Mobile Ad Hoc Wireless Networks

Abstract

Mobile ad hoc network due to its inherent capabilities received a significant researcher’s attention recently. Wireless networks like mobile ad hoc networks are application-specific, infrastructure-less, short-duration networks with many features like arbitrary or dynamic topology, homogeneity/heterogeneity, self-organizing, decentralization, high flexibility, routing, etc. The main purpose of mobile ad hoc networking is to extend its short-duration services for specific applications into the realm of autonomous, mobile, wireless domains, where the mobile nodes form the network topology in an arbitrary fashion. The vulnerabilities in a wireless environment, viz., temperature, noise, pressure, magnetic effects, have significant impact on the connectivity. Connectivity is related to node mobility, link formation and hence failure of either one or both results in connectivity loss. When connectivity is lost, the network becomes unreliable. In this paper, a comprehensive review of the effects of wireless environment on mobile ad hoc network reliability is proposed. From the results, it is understandable that in the absence of noise the network is highly reliable and as the environmental noise increases, the reliability falls down by 32%.