Distribution of Path Durations in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks – Palm’s Theorem at Work

We first study the distribution of path duration in multi-hop wireless networks. We show that as the number of hops along a path increases, the path duration distribution can be accurately approximated by an exponential distribution under a set of mild conditions, even when the link duration distributions are not identical. Then, we develop an approximate model for the Random Waypoint (RW) mobility model for computing the distribution of link duration, and demonstrate that the path duration distribution converges to an exponential distribution with increasing number of hops.