An environment-aware mobility model for wireless ad hoc network

Simulation is a cost effective, fast and flexible alternative to test-beds or practical deployment for evaluating the characteristics and potential of mobile ad hoc networks. Since environmental context and mobility have a great impact on the accuracy and efficacy of performance measurement, it is of paramount importance how closely the mobility of a node resembles its movement pattern in a real-world scenario. The existing mobility models mostly assume either free space for deployment and random node movement or the movement pattern does not emulate real-world situation properly in the presence of obstacles because of their generation of restricted paths. This demands for the development of a node movement pattern with accurately representing any obstacle and existing path in a complex and realistic deployment scenario. In this paper, we propose a general mobility model capable of creating a more realistic node movement pattern by exploiting the concept of flexible positioning of anchors. Since the model places anchors depending upon the context of the environment through which nodes are guided to move towards the destination, it is capable of representing any terrain realistically. Furthermore, obstacles of arbitrary shapes with or without doorways and any existing pathways in full or part of the terrain can be incorporated which makes the simulation environment more realistic. A detailed computational complexity has been analyzed and the characteristics of the proposed mobility model in the presence of obstacles in a university campus map with and without signal attenuation are presented which illustrates its significant impact on performance evaluation of wireless ad hoc networks