Mobility Models used in Simulation Area of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Simulation environments are an important tool for the evaluation of new concepts in networking. The study of mobile ad hoc networks depends on understanding protocols from simulations, before these protocols are implemented in a real-world setting. In the performance evaluation of a protocol for an ad hoc network, the protocol should be tested under realistic conditions including, but not limited to, a sensible transmission range, limited buffer space for the storage of messages, representative data traffic models and realistic movements of the mobile users (i.e. a mobility model). Network simulators emerged as the most common method of evaluating the performance of large and complex networking systems. Existing mobility models vary widely in their realism, from completely artificial to very realistic as well as in their statistical properties. This paper is a survey of mobility models that are used in the simulations of ad hoc networks. We describe several mobility models that represent mobile nodes whose movements are independent of each other (i.e. entity mobility models) and several mobility models that represent mobile nodes whose movements are dependent on each other (i.e. group mobility models). In this paper we provide an overview of those mobility models and their most important properties.