Topology-Based Mobility Models for Wireless Networks

The performance and reliability of wireless network protocols heavily depend on the network and its environment. In wireless networks node mobility can affect the overall performance up to a point where, e.g. route discovery and route establishment fail. As a consequence any formal technique for performance analysis of wireless network protocols should take node mobility into account. In this paper we propose a topology-based mobility model, that abstracts from physical behaviour, and models mobility as probabilistic changes in the topology. We demonstrate how this model can be instantiated to cover the main aspects of the random walk and the random waypoint mobility model. The model is not a stand-alone model, but intended to be used in combination with protocol models. We illustrate this by two application examples: first we show a brief analysis of the Ad-hoc On demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol, and second we combine the mobility model with the Lightweight Medium Access Control (LMAC).