Modelling and performance analysis of multi-hop ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc networks are becoming very attractive and useful in many kinds of communication and networking applications. Due to the advantage of numerical analysis, analytical modelling formalisms, such as stochastic Petri nets, queuing networks and stochastic process algebra have been widely used for performance analysis of communication systems. To the best of our knowledge, there is no previous analytical study that analyses the performance of multi-hop ad hoc networks, where mobile nodes move according to a random mobility model in terms of the end-to-end delay and throughput. This work presents a novel analytical framework developed using stochastic reward nets for modelling and analysis of multi-hop ad hoc networks, based on the IEEE 802.11 DCF MAC protocol, where mobile nodes move according to the random waypoint mobility model. The proposed framework is used to analyse the performance of multi-hop ad hoc networks as a function of network parameters such as the transmission range, carrier sensing range, interference range, number of nodes, network area size, packet size, and packet generation rate. The proposed framework is organized into several models to break up the complexity of modelling the complete network, and make it easier to analyse each model as required. The framework is based on the idea of decomposition and fixed point iteration of stochastic reward nets. The proposed models are validated using extensive simulations.