Mobility based estimation of node stability in MANETs

Providing an efficient, robust and low overhead unicast path from source node to destination node in MANETs is a critical issue due to frequent changes in the network topology and mobility of the nodes (which cause frequent break down in radio links). Hence it is necessary to check the node stability with respect to the node mobility during path establishment. This paper proposes a method to find the stability factor of the node by considering self and neighbor nodes mobility. The steps in finding the stability factor of a node are as follows. (1) All the nodes in MANET find the self stability, i.e. when the node is moving to a new position with respect to its previous position. (2) Find neighbors stability of all the nodes in MANET by considering the neighbors self stability, and (3) Each node in the MANET will compute the stability factor based on self stability and neighbors stability. The stability factor of a node may be used to establish a path from the source to the destination. The stable nodes in the path will provide higher packet delivery ratio and lower latency. We have simulated the network scenario to show the impact on the node stability under the influence of varying node speeds and number of nodes.