The impact of mobility models on theperformance of mobile ad hoc network (MANET)

Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is a set of mobile or wireless stations that are located dynamically and randomly in such a way that the interconnections between stations may change continuously. Mobility models can greatly impact the performance of MANET and its routing protocol, therefore, mobility of nodes, the network size and packet size are some factors that require critical consideration in determining which model and protocol is deployed in a given situation. This paper analyzed the impact of mobility models on the performance of MANET through simulation. In the simulation, Random WayPoint (RWP) and Manet_Down_Left (MDL) were the mobility models used. These models were configured with Dynamic Source Routing protocols. The results of this paper indicated that in the environment where the pause time and speed were 5s and 5-10m/s respectively, RWP DSR performed better than MDL DSR by having 59% of throughput; lower delay of 41% and 60% of routing traffic delivered. On the other hand, when the pause time and speed were changed to 15s and 25-30m/s respectively, MDL DSR 2 had better performance than RWP DSR by providing 56% of throughput; lower delay of 47% and 54% of routing traffic delivered. The simulation results proved that the performance of MANET varies across different mobility models, different speed and pause time.