The Effect of Mobility Models on the Mobile Ad hoc Networks Routing Protocols

A wireless ad hoc network is an infrastructure-less network where nodes are mobile and form a temporary network which causes the network topology to change repeatedly. The commonly used mobility model in most of simulations related to MANET (Mobile Ad hoc NETwork) is Random Waypoint. This mobility is simple but not suitable model for many applications. At the first, we describe several mobility models. To evaluate the effect of these mobility models on the performance of MANETs, a new flexible and user friendly tool is designed and implemented. We used different mobility models generated by this tool to simulate some of the MANET routing protocols. Our simulation results reveal that the QoS metrics of simulated protocols change intensely and the ranking of protocols may change with the mobility models used. It is clear that in the most of the real world scenarios for MANETs, mobile nodes have a relation with others and don’t act autonomously. So in general it seems that group mobility models are more realistic. Based on these simulations it is obvious that the correct and accurate mobility models according to the specification of intended application leads to more realistic results.