Geometric model for minimizing node discovery load in network simulators for large ad hoc networks

Abstract

The area of wireless ad hoc networking has been receiving increasing attention among researchers in recent years. NS2 is the most common simulator which is used to simulate wireless ad hoc networks. But, NS2 does not scale the simulation well, where there are a large number of nodes in a simulation area. In this paper a geometric approach is proposed targeting the optimization of the area that exists between the approximated area for processing and the area outside the coverage area of a transmitter. Thus, this proposed algorithm reduces the number of unaffected nodes (considering the transmission signal range), which are currently considered by the NS2 simulator for checking, whether the node resides inside the transmission area or not. The current version of NS2 uses a block based optimization but the algorithm, proposed here, reduces the coverage area of the blocks near the boundary of the transmission range, targeting the improvement of the performance of NS2 for the simulation of large ad hoc networks. These theoretic assumptions have been followed by extensive realistic test conditions for generating a set of sensible result-set for achieving the optimum from the proposed physical propagation model to facilitate NS2 with a faster simulation performance for larger wireless ad hoc mobile network. The proposed approach saves the coverage area from at least 12.5% upto 78.15% than in existing solution.