Mobility Models and Simulation Tools for Opportunistic Networks

Opportunistic networks are considered to be a special class of ad-hoc networks, where nodes carry the data packets until new communication opportunity is found. In opportunistic networks, there is an absence of permanent links between the nodes and it exhibits high delay. Simulation allows us to create the real world scenarios in resource and timed constrained environment. Assumptions and simulation tools play a vital role in the performance estimation of any network protocol. Thus, it is very important that tools be chosen carefully. In this article, we present a general idea of mobility model used in opportunistic networks research. Further, we describe the commonly used simulation tools in opportunistic networks along with their merits and limitations.