Citation: Salah, S.; Zaghal, R.;
Abdeljawad, M. A
Mathematical-Based Model for
Estimating the Path Duration of the
DSDV Routing Protocol in MANETs.
J. Sens. Actuator Netw. 2022, 11, 23.
https://doi.org/10.3390/
jsan11020023
Academic Editor: Anfeng Liu
Received: 25 February 2022
Accepted: 23 April 2022
Published: 12 May 2022
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Journal of
Actuator Networks
Sensor and
Article
A Mathematical-Based Model for Estimating the Path Duration
of the DSDV Routing Protocol in MANETs
Saeed Salah , Raid Zaghal * and Mada Abdeljawad
Department of Computer Science, Al-Quds University, P.O. Box 89, Abu-Dies, Jerusalem 20002, Palestine;
sasalah@staff.alquds.edu (S.S.); madaaemail@gmail.com (M.A.)
* Correspondence: zaghal@staff.alquds.edu
Abstract:
Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) are kind of wireless networks where the nodes move
in decentralized environments with a highly dynamic infrastructure. Many well-known routing
protocols have been proposed, with each having its own design mechanism and its own strengths and
weaknesses and most importantly, each protocol being mainly designed for specific applications and
scenarios. Most of the research studies in this field used simulation testbeds to analyze routing proto-
cols. Very few contributions suggested the use of analytical studies and mathematical approaches
to model some of the existing routing protocols. In this research, we have built a comprehensive
mathematical-based model to analyze the Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector protocol (DSDV),
one of the main widely deployed proactive protocols and studied its performance on estimating the
path duration based on the concepts of the probability density function and the expected values to
find the best approximation values in real scenarios. We have tested the validity of the proposed
model using simulation scenarios implemented by the Network Simulator tool (NS3). The results
extracted from both the mathematical model and the simulation have shown that the path duration is
inversely proportional to both the speed of the node and the hop count. Furthermore, it had shown
that the path duration estimated from the DSDV protocol is less than the actual path duration, due to
the implementation of the settling time concept and keeping the “periodic routes’ update” parameter
at a constant level, despite the fact that the node’s speed reduces the effective path utilization.
Keywords:
manet; DSDV; proactive routing; link duration; path duration; path availability; network
performance
1. Introduction
Mobile nodes that use Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have increased significantly
in recent years, due to the fact that mobile applications and their usage play a vital role
in many sectors. A Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is a special type of WSNs which
is defined as a collection of independent mobile nodes (mobile devices, laptops, Personal
Digital Assistants (PDAs), etc.) that have the ability of exchanging information wirelessly
without the need for fixed infrastructures, such as access points, switches or routers [
1
].
Due to the frequent physical changes of the topological infrastructure, mobile nodes must
perform all the network activities on their own, including the discovery of a network topol-
ogy, the process of building their own routing tables and the process of managing updates
or sending control messages among nodes, as well as the capability of sending, receiving
and forwarding information between nodes, i.e., in this case mobile nodes inherit the router
operations to forward connection requests between nodes in a distributed fashion [
2
,
3
].
Mobile nodes have limited resources such as small memory, tiny power resource, limited
bandwidth links and low processing power. Because the links are established wirelessly,
data transmission over MANETs is vulnerable to high packet losses and more frequent
path disconnections compared to wired networks. These issues might also degrade the
reliability of the network in delivering data traffic. Mobile nodes that are in a radio range
J. Sens. Actuator Netw. 2022, 11, 23. https://doi.org/10.3390/jsan11020023 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jsan
