Traffic Measurement and Statistical Analysis in a Disaster Area Scenario

Disaster areas are a typical usage scenario for mobile wireless communication systems (e.g. ad-hoc networks). Performance evaluation in mobile wireless communication systems is mainly done using simulation. Simulation results strongly depend on the traffic models used. Today, the traffic mainly used in disaster areas is voice traffic. In this paper, we present measurements of voice traffic done in a disaster area maneuver. Based on these measurements, we perform a statistical analysis of channel holding and interarrival times. We show that the traffic in disaster area scenarios has characteristics different from public mobile telephony systems. Thus, when simulating disaster area networks, different traffic characteristics should be assumed. With the results presented in this paper, it is possible to reach a realistic traffic for disaster area scenarios.