Impact of group mobility on ad hoc networks routing protocols

Group communication has become increasingly important in mobile ad hoc networks. Effective support of group communication is essential for most ad hoc network applications where group communication is a crucial task. In mobile ad hoc network group communications, issues differ from those in wired networks because node mobility causes continuously changing topology in which routes break unpredictably and new routes form dynamically. Network partitioning and merging often occur in group movement scenarios such as in military operations, search and rescue operations etc. Based on these applications, we propose a novel group mobility model, called reference region group mobility (RRGM) model, to describe such group motion behaviors. By using the density-based approach, the size of the region covered by a group can be controlled. With the proposed model, we studied the impact of group formation and group partition on various ad hoc routing protocols. Furthermore, this model can be used in studying issues such as network partition prediction.