Hoc Routing Under Randomised Propagation Models ⋆

The deployment of mobile ad hoc networks is difficult in a research environment and therefore the performance of protocols for these networks has been mostly evaluated on simulators. A simulator must replicate realistic conditions and one of the most difficult aspects is the radio signal propagation model. The literature shows that many performance evaluations were conducted using propagation models that are not realistic for the expected application scenarios. This paper shows that the non-determinism present in some radio propagation models induce randomness which may compromise the performance of many protocols. To demonstrate the problem, this paper compares and discusses the performance of some routing protocols under different propagation models.