Abstract
A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a collection of wireless mobile nodes forming a temporary network without using any existing infrastructure. Since not many MANETs are currently deployed, research in this area is mostly simulation based. Random waypoint is the commonly used mobility model in these simulations. Random waypoint is a simple model that may be applicable to some scenarios. However, we believe that it is not sufficient to capture some important mobility characteristics of scenarios in which MANETs may be deployed. Our framework aims to evaluate the impact of different mobility models on the performance of MANET routing protocols. We propose various protocol independent metrics to capture interesting mobility characteristics, including spatial and temporal dependence and geographic restrictions. In addition, a rich set of parameterized mobility models is introduced including random waypoint, group mobility, freeway and Manhattan models. Based on these models several 'test-suite' scenarios are chosen carefully to span the metric space. We demonstrate the utility of our test-suite by evaluating various MANET routing protocols, including DSR, AODV and DSDV. Our results show that the protocol performance may vary drastically across mobility models and performance rankings of protocols may vary with the mobility models used. This effect can be explained by the interaction of the mobility characteristics with the connectivity graph properties. Finally, we attempt to decompose the routing protocols into mechanistic "building blocks" to gain a deeper insight into the performance variations across protocols in the face of mobility.