A Parsimonious Model of Mobile Partitioned Networks With Clustering

Mobile wireless networks frequently possess, at the same time, both dense and sparse regions of connectivity; for example, due to a heterogeneous node distribution or radio propagation environment. This paper is about modeling both the mobility and the formation of clusters in such networks, where nodes are concentrated in clusters of dense connectivity, interspersed with sparse connectivity. Uniformly dense and sparse networks have been extensively studied in the past, but not much attention has been devoted to clustered networks. This paper presents a new mobility model for clustered networks, which is important for the design and evaluation of routing protocols. The paper refers to the model as Heterogeneous Random Walk (HRW).