One wireless network architecture that has received a lot of attention recently is the mobile ad hoc network (MANET). It is attractive because the network can be quickly deployed without the infrastructure of base stations. One main feature of MANET is that mobile hosts may communicate with each other through a sequence of wireless links (i.e., in a multihop manner). While many routing protocols have been proposed for MANET by considering criteria such as length, quality, bandwidth, and signal

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... trength [1], [8], [4], [5], [7], [15] , the issue of route lifetime has not been addressed formally. This paper presents a formal model to predict the lifetime of a routing path based on the random walk model. Route lifetime is derived based on a probabilistic model. Through such investigation, we hope to provide further insight into issues such as route selection, route maintenance, and network scalability related to MANETs.