Impact of the Optimum Routing and Least Overhead Routing Approaches on Minimum Hop Routes and Connected Dominating Sets in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks I

Communication protocols for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) follow either an Optimum Routing Approach (ORA) or the Least Overhead Routing Approach (LORA): With ORA, protocols tend to determine and use the optimal communication structure at every time instant; whereas with LORA, a protocol tends to use a chosen communication structure as long as it exists. In this paper, we study the impact of the ORA and LORA strategies on minimum hop routes and minimum connected dominating sets (MCDS) in MANETs. Our primary hypothesis is that the LORA strategy could yield routes with a larger time-averaged hop count and MCDS node size when compared to the minimum hop count of routes and the node size of the MCDS determined using the ORA strategy. Our secondary hypothesis is that the impact of ORA vs. LORA also depends on how long the communication structure is being used. Our hypotheses are evaluated using extensive simulations under diverse conditions of network density, node mobility and mobility models such as the Random Waypoint model, City Section model and the Manhattan model. In the case of minimum hop routes, which exist for relatively a much longer time compared to the MCDS, the hop count of routes maintained according to LORA, even though not dramatically high, is appreciably larger (6-12%) than those maintained according to ORA; on the other hand, the number of nodes constituting a MCDS maintained according to LORA is only at most 6% larger than the node size of a MCDS maintained under the ORA strategy.