A Comparative Study of Random Waypoint and Gauss-Markov Mobility Models in the Performance Evaluation of MANET

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a network consisting of a set of wireless mobile nodes that communicate with each other without centralized control or established infrastructure. The mobility model represents the moving behavior of each mobile node (MN) in the MANET that should be realistic. It is a crucial part in the performance evaluation of MANET. Random waypoint mobility model is the only mobility model that has been widely used in the simulation study of MANET despite some unrealistic movement behaviors such as sudden stop and sharp turn. Whilst Gauss-Markov mobility model has been proved that it can solve both of these problems. This paper presents a comparative simulation study of random waypoint and Gauss-Markov mobility models on the performance study of MANET that uses ad-hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) as the routing protocol. The results show that both mobility models are not different in case each MN is moving at human running speed. Therefore, it is suggested to use random waypoint mobility model because of its less computational overhead comparing to Gauss-Markov mobility model. When the speed of MNs is as high as fast automobiles, the performance result using random waypoint mobility model is significant different from Gauss-Markov mobility model. Therefore, Gauss-Markov mobility model should be used instead. Moreover, different levels of randomness setting have no effect on the accuracy of throughput and end-to-end delay