The impact of mobility patterns on the efficiency of data forwarding in MANETs

One of the most challenging requirements in cutting-edge Mobile Ad hoc Networks is the need for adaptive and efficient routing. Networks capable of adapting their behavior based on current conditions are often characterized as self-organizing networks, which are lately considered very promising for future applications. This work examines the impact of the different mobility properties on the performance of self-organizing networks. For that purpose, a simulator was developed to model different mobility patterns and study the way they affect the effectiveness of the well-known AODV routing protocol. Particularly, this paper focuses on the effect of the different mobility schemes on network topology and consequently to the overall network performance. The results reveal the tight correlations between node mobility characteristics and network metrics.