A review on mobility models in disaster area scenario

Communication network plays a big part for us in our lives. It is needed to perform daily tasks, access information and communicate each other anytime, anywhere and from any device. Nowadays, the communication network is a priority when it comes to a disaster scenario such as earthquakes, typhoons, tsunamis etc. The fixed communication network may be partially or fully destroyed or may be overloaded due to the aftermath of the disaster. It is crucial for rescue teams to establish a disaster recovery network for them to communicate with each other during their Search and Rescue (SAR) operations and mission critical. The disaster recovery network must be established within a short period to ensure the smooth operation of the rescue teams. Mobile Ad-Hoc Network (MANET) is a favourable approach for recovering the communication network as it can be deployed rapidly after the disaster rather than fixed communication network. MANET is an infrastructure-less network that can be deployed instantly and maintained easily. MANET can be used to address the issue of increasing communication requests, especially for data, speech, and video stream transmission. Due to limitations on scalability, repeatability, speed and cost, software simulations are often chosen instead of field-test experiments to verify the characteristics of designated topology control and protocols used in MANET for the disaster area scenario. The behaviour of the protocols used in MANET is highly affected by nodes' mobility model. The mobility model shows the nodes' movement and should be able to resemble the real-life situation for the designated scenario. Most of existing mobility models, such as random-based movements show unrealistic movement in concerns with the rescue teams' movement as they will not move randomly during their SAR operations. Instead, their movements are influenced by existing obstacles such as walls, trees and others. This paper reviews the existing mobility models used for investigating the movement of the rescue entities in the disaster area scenario. Some of other resilient disaster communication networks aside from MANET and MANET simulation tools were also reviewed. The main aim of this paper is to find the ideal mobility model that can realistically describe the movement of the rescue entities in the disaster area scenario. A comparative analysis, which includes the approaches and limitations on the related works was presented. By the end of this paper, a conclusion is drawn and suggestions aspects for future researches were stated.