Analysis of small world phenomena and group mobility in ad hoc networks

Abstract

The main application of wireless mobile ad hoc networks is to offer services for situations wherein groups of people come together and share information. The groups of people that use the ad hoc network form some kind of social network. In this paper an analysis of the performances of mobile ad hoc networks is performed when taking into consideration its social characteristics through the small world phenomena of the application layer and usage of group-based mobility. The simulations show that the social interconnection between the network users has an extreme influence on the network performances. The results bring forth a different view on the real life deployment of ad hoc networks when compared to the poor performances of the purely randomized scenarios.