A Model-free Mobility Metric Based on Node Affiliation for Simulation of Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks

In the area of mobile ad hoc and sensor networks, simulation became the evaluation method of choice. Due to the high number of variables - including transmission range, number of nodes, simulation area, mobility pattern-simulation settings vary largely from work to work, depending on the application scenario focused. The results for two simulations with identical setting, but different mobility models, or in some cases, just different initial node deployments can cause very different results that cause a natural tendency to compare these apparently similar simulations. This paper contributes on this problem by proposing to model mobility based the affiliation dynamics of the nodes. Thus, links become first class citizen and exogenous simulation parameters as the size of the simulation area and the number of nodes are of less importance. We show that this approach is a consistence approach to model mobility in ad hoc and sensor networks and makes simulation settings easier to compare.