Fluid Flow and Random Walk Mobility Model for Wireless Mobile Network Research: A Review

In performance evaluation of mobility management protocols for Wireless Mobile Networks (WMN) estimating cell change rate of mobile users is very important. Based on the rate of cell change (also called handoff rate) other parameters such as location update cost, handoff latency etc. may be calculated. Moreover, any new mobility management protocol must be examined either mathematically or through simulation before its use in real network. Since the cell change rate is dependent on movement pattern of users; that is why modeling of user movement in order to evaluate the performance of protocols and architectures for WMN plays a vital role. The aim of this paper is to discuss Fluid Flow and Random Walk mobility and different method to estimate cell changing rate using these two models. Our intention is to support researchers with options to choose a suitable model when their protocol or architecture needs to be studied under various mobility patterns.