WiQoSM: An Integrated QoS-Aware Mobility and User Behavior Model for Wireless Data Networks

Abstract

Modeling mobility and user behavior is of fundamental importance in testing the performance of protocols for wireless data networks. While several models have been proposed in the literature, none of them can at the same time capture important features such as geographical mobility, user generated traffic, and wireless technology at hand. When collectively considered, these three aspects determine the user-perceived QoS-level, which, in turn, might have an influence on mobility of those users (we call them QoSdriven users) who do not display constrained mobility patterns, but they can decide to move to less congested areas of the network in case their perceived QoS-level becomes unacceptable. In this paper, we introduce the WiQoSM model which collectively considers all the above mentioned aspects of wireless data networks. WiQoSM is composed of i) a user mobility model, ii) a user traffic model, iii) a wireless technology model, and iv) a QoS model. Components i), ii), and iii) provide input to the QoS model, which, in turn, can influence the mobility behavior of QoS-driven users. WiQoSM is very simple to use and configure, and can be used to generate user and traffic traces at the APs composing a wireless data network. Based on WiQoSM, we perform an extensive simulation-based analysis of network usage under different combinations of network parameters, which discloses interesting insights and shows that WiQoSM, despite its simplicity, is able to capture important properties observed in real-world network deployments