Topology Change Degree: a Mobility Metric Describing Topology Changes in MANETs and Distinguishing Different Mobility Patterns

摘要

Frequent changes in network topology caused by node mobility in MANETs impose great challenges to maintain network performance. Accurate aware of the network environment changes (including topology changes) has a positive impact on improving network adaptability in sophistical scenarios. This paper studies the differentiation of mobile models from the perspective of node motion characteristics and topology changes between nodes. The proposed topology change degree is defined from the aspects of distance change, movement direction change, relative speed change and the number of one-hop neighbors among nodes. The simulation results show that the metric can quantitatively characterize the instantaneous topology change at the sensing moment and the average topology change during the network life cycle. It can also effectively distinguish several common mobile models and has a significant advantage over other mobile metrics.