Comparison of Two Mobility Models for Tactical Ad Hoc Networks

When modelling tactical radio networks it is important to capture the effects of the nodes' mobility. Here we compare a tactical scenario with two mobility models, a random walk model and a group mobility model. Compared to the random walk model, the group model offers more adjustment options but has a more complex model structure. Evaluation of a basic waveform shows that the group mobility model is less challenging than the random walk model in terms of available capacity, but more challenging in terms of delivery ratio. The group model also requires more or longer simulations compared to the random walk model to obtain the same variance of the evaluated metrics. Furthermore, the evaluation shows that the radio channel and the used terrain area usually have much more effect on the simulation result than the movement patterns of the nodes. Thus, it is most important to model the dynamics of a the radio channel in realistic way. The movement of the nodes also needs to be modelled, however, detailed modelling of the movement patterns has little effect.