Connectivity of Wireless Ad Hoc Networks: Impacts of Antenna Models

This paper concerns the impact of various antenna models on the network connectivity of wireless ad hoc networks. Existing antenna models have their pros and cons in the accuracy reflecting realistic antennas and the computational complexity. We therefore propose a new directional antenna model called Approx-real to balance the accuracy against the complexity. We then run extensive simulations to compare the existing models and the Approx-real model in terms of the network connectivity. The study results show that the Approx-real model can better approximate the best accurate existing antenna models than other simplified antenna models, while introducing no high computational overheads.