Impact of Deployment Strategies and Mobility Models on MANET Routing Protocols: A Performance Evaluation
Sajjad Abbas, Raad A. Qasim, Habeeb Noori Jumaah · Ingénierie des systèmes d information · 2025
Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) have become dominant networks in the current technological era due to their importance in the Internet of Things (IoT) and the future of smart cities.The problem with MANET networks is that they are not stable in performance because many factors can be involved (i.e., deployment of mobile nodes, movements of nodes, the nature of the environment, etc.).For instance, selecting a routing protocol is considered a challenging task because it is not the only factor affecting network performance.Despite extensive studies on MANET routing, the combined impact of deployment strategies and mobility models remains underexplored.Hence, in this paper, two routing protocols are developed, designed, and implemented.Moreover, to understand MANET network performance, using OMNeT++, we simulated 105 scenarios combining 3 deployment strategies (Normal, Uniform, Exponential) and 5 mobility models (Correlated Direction, Cauchy Flight, Exponential, Levy Flight, Individual Mobility).Statistical significance was validated via ANOVA (p < 0.03).These experiments include combinations of deployment strategies (i.e., Normal, Uniform, and Exponential deployment strategies).Five mobility models are also implemented and incorporated into the design of the simulator and experiments, such as the Correlated Direction mobility model, the Cauchy flight mobility model, the Exponential mobility model, the Levy Flight mobility model, and the Individual Mobility model.Also, two evaluation metrics are involved, namely, coverage area and data spreading.The findings show that the proposed routing protocols outperform the benchmarking, and their results are statistically significant.