Impact of the Gauss-Markov Mobility Model on Network Connectivity, Lifetime and Hop Count of Routes for Mobile Ad hoc Networks

The high-level contribution of this paper is a simulation based analysis of the network connectivity, hop count and lifetime of the routes determined for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) using the Gauss-Markov mobility model. The Random Waypoint mobility model is used as a benchmark in the simulation studies. Two kinds of routes are determined: routes with the longest lifetime (stable paths) and routes with the minimum hop count. Extensive simulations have been conducted for different network density, node mobility values and different values of the degree of randomness parameter α (0 ≤ α ≤ 1) for the GaussMarkov model. In low-density network scenarios, we observe that the network connectivity under the GaussMarkov model is significantly lower than that obtained under the Random Waypoint model. In moderate and highdensity network scenarios, the network connectivity obtained under the two mobility models is almost equal. The minimum hop paths determined under the Gauss-Markov model have a larger number of hops than those computed under the Random Waypoint model. The lifetime of stable paths determined under the Gauss-Markov model is smaller than those determined under the Random Waypoint model. Low-density networks using the Gauss-Markov mobility model attain larger connectivity for intermediate values of parameter α (i.e., 0.4 ≤ α ≤ 0.8), while the connectivity of moderate and high-density networks is not significantly dependent on α. The minimum hop count of the paths is not much affected by different values of α, while maximum lifetime stable paths are obtained for larger intermediate values of α (i.e., α = 0.6 and 0.8), but not for unity. Index Terms – Mobile ad hoc networks, Route stability, Hop count, Gauss-Markov Mobility Model, Simulation