Gugrajah_Yuvaan_ Ramesh_2003.pdf

Conclusion
6.2. Future Work
6.2.1. Load Balancing and Cross-Layer Adaptations
Chapter 6
The simulations results in Chapter 3 show that load balancing and signal monitoring
are advantageous to the performance of the routing protocol. Other methods of
monitoring the environment by allowing the interaction of various layers of the
protocol stack can be investigated. For example, the medium access control protocol
has already been used in some simulations discussed in the literature to provide the
routing protocol with connectivity information. Route selection can benefit from
information gained due to these interactions.
6.2.2. Simulator Mobility Models
Software simulators are used in an attempt to simulate real life statistics. However,
the assumptions that are made, such as arrival statistics, service statistics,
propagation models and mobility models, are questionable. A potential area of
investigation is in the determination of realistic mobility models that would apply to
particular application scenarios. While the random movement models do provide
certain insights in the behaviour of the protocols, the next step is to obtain actual user
mobility traces so that the routing protocols can be evaluated in a more realistic
scenario. Experiments could also provide the required physical layer propagation
models that would allow the simulator to consider more realistic wireless
environments. While too much detail results in slow and cumbersome simulators,
simulations that lack necessary detail can result in misleading or incorrect results.
6.2.3. Analytical Model Assumptions
The Poisson arrival is the fundamental assumption underlying the Erlang Formula.
The reduced load approximation and many other strategies for evaluating networks
rely on this assumption. The importance of this assumption is that the distribution of
the call duration only shows through its mean value in the blocking probability. It is
foreseeable that with long holding times in data networks (which implies infinite
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