Routing in Mobile Ad hoc Networks: Cases of long-hop and short-hop

A fundamental problem of mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is to determine whether it is advantageous to route packet over many short-hops or few long-hops. The main arguments for short-hop routing are minimum energy consumption and high signal-to-interference ratio. Minimum energy consumption maximizes network life. High signal-to-interference ratio maximizes network capacity. On the other hand, main arguments for using long-hop routing are low end-to-end packet delay and high reliability. Low end-to-end packet delay enables network to carry more traffic for a given period of time. High reliability reduces packet loss in the network. In this paper, short-hop and long-hop routing issues of MANET have been investigated. More light was shed on these issues by listing the network parameters that need to be considered while choosing short-hop or long-hop routing. The simulation results show that short-hop routing is a good candidate to maximize network life, to minimize packet loss and to maintain network capacity. On the other than, long-hop routing is preferable to ensure network connectivity, to minimize end-to-end packet delay and to reduce overhead control messages.