Abstract
The number of hops between the source and destination nodes is a key parameter in studying multi-hop ad hoc networks analytically. To the best of our known, there is no analytical work that considers the hop count of paths in MANETs in a random mobility environment. This paper presents a theoretical study for the expected number of hops between any random source-destination pair in multi-hop ad hoc networks where nodes move according to the random waypoint mobility model. The effects of network parameters such as node density, size of the network area, and node transmission range are studied. Simulation experiments for different network parameters have been conducted to validate the proposed analytical approach.