Review of Mobility Models for Performance Evaluation of Wireless Networks

Performance evaluation of protocols and mechanisms in wireless networks require a good representation of client mobility. The number of mobility models has been developed, to emulate the changes of location in time of mobile wireless devices in communication networks, such as e.g. mobile phones, tablets, netbooks, palmtops. Mobility models are used to verify the protocols and algorithms developed for wireless networks in simulation and using analytical tools. The mobility patterns of such devices converges with human movement patterns, as the mobile devices bearers. Among many propositions of human mobility modeling in the literature this paper presents and reviews techniques which are most commonly used or that give very good estimation of actual mobile device bearer behavior. The models are divided into 3 groups: random, social and hybrid.