Impacts of Radio Propagation Model on Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) Performance in Group Mobility Environments

As the applications for Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks (MANETs) have varied, performance analysis has become one of the main research areas. They commonly offer only simple radio propagation models that neglect obstacles of a propagation environment. The radio wave propagation model has a strong impact on the results of the simulation run. In this paper we present the new experimental results of the impacts of the various propagation models on MANETs' performance. Intensive simulations have been presented using the group mobility which models typical ad-hoc situations such as military movements or disaster recovery activities under the supervision of a group leader. Comparisons of conventional simple models with more complicated models, i.e., shadowing, Raleigh, and Ricean models, show that, in spite of the models' popularity, the free space and two-ray ground models are too optimistic in describing real ad-hoc group mobility situations.