COBRA: A framework for the analysis of realistic mobility models

Abstract

The future global Internet is going to have to cater to users that will be largely mobile. Mobility is one of the main factors affecting the design and performance of wireless networks. Mobility modeling has been an active field for the past decade, mostly focusing on matching a specific mobility or encounter metric with little focus on matching protocol performance. This study investigates the adequacy of existing mobility models in capturing various aspects of human mobility behavior (including communal behavior), as well as network protocol performance. This is achieved systematically through the introduction of a framework that includes a multi-dimensional mobility metric space. We then introduce COBRA, a new mobility model capable of spanning the mobility metric space to match realistic traces. A methodical analysis using a range of protocol (epidemic, spraywait, Prophet, and Bubble Rap) dependent and independent metrics (modularity) of various mobility models (SMOOTH and TVC) and traces (university campuses, and theme parks) is done. Our results indicate significant gaps in several metric dimensions between real traces and existing mobility models. Our findings show that COBRA matches communal aspect and realistic protocol performance, reducing the overhead gap (w.r.t existing models) from 80% to less than 12%, showing the efficacy of our framework.