Constructing MANET Simulation Scenarios That Meet Standards

Choosing an appropriate simulation scenario to study the performance of a MANET routing protocol is an important process. For example, routing will not be properly evaluated when a simulation scenario with a low average hop count or a large degree of network partitioning is used. To ensure that a simulation scenario provides an effective platform for testing a MANET routing protocol, we recommend that researchers use two metrics to characterize their simulation scenarios: the average shortest-path hop count and the average amount of network partitioning. In this paper, we provide researchers with several models that take the desired values for these two metrics as inputs, and output the simulation area and number of nodes required to create a simulation scenario that meets the researcher's target values for these two metrics to a close approximation. In this way, we provide several models that researchers can use to construct simulation scenarios that meet their standards in the evaluation of a MANET routing protocol.