(2008) Stepanov, Illya; Rothermel, Kurt (Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr. h. c.)
Network simulation tools are frequently used for the performance analysis of mobile networks. Their common shortcoming lies within the approaches they use for the modeling of user mobility and radio wave propagation. The provided mobility models describe random movements within the area, which is similar to the motion of molecular particles. For the modeling of a radio channel, the tools assume a line of sight between communicating nodes, and thus, a simple dependency of the signal loss to the distance from the transmitter. These models poorly reflect real scenarios, in which the characteristics of the spatial environment have a significant impact on the network performance.
In this thesis more realistic mobility and radio propagation models are described and integrated into a network simulation. These models are based on the solutions from related research areas like physics, transportation planning, traffic modeling, and electrical engineering, which have been validated against real-world data. They consider digital maps of the simulation area, which are taken from a geographic information system (GIS). This thesis analyzes common geospatial data standards to provide input to the used mobility and radio propagation models.
The evaluations show significant differences between the simulation results obtained with simpler and more realistic models. It is caused by the changes in the distribution of network users due to their mobility in the area and the obstacles of the propagation environment, which simple models cannot reflect.
