Extending Wireless Network Simulators to Support Realistic Simulations of 802.11 MANETs

It is shown in this paper how wireless network simulators should be extended to enable the realistic evaluation of link quality prediction algorithms for 802.11 MANETs. These extensions are a novel broadband small-scale fading model, bit/packet error modeling using this model with the Moment Generating Function of and the use of spatial correlation in the stochastic large-scale fading model. We justify and detail the extensions made. We evaluate three Link Quality Prediction algorithms from the literature by performing measurements and simulations. We conclude that the extensions made enable the accurate simulation of link quality prediction algorithms which has hitherto been deficient.