Propagation models in single/multi-radio scenarios: overview and influence analysis

The evolution in low power communications and low-cost electronics is pushing up the deployment of more and more devices, which traduces in an overcrowded radio electrical environment. This overcrowd requires new mechanisms to mitigate it, and therefore, Cognitive Radio and Multi-Radio techniques become relevant. These techniques are gaining the attention of the research community, becoming a trendy research theme. Due to the difficulty of deploying large networks with research purposes, simulators arises as a useful alternative. Simulators are a research field itself, being based on different components, from where propagation models are one of the principals, allowing the simulation of different environmental conditions. This work presents a deep analysis of the different wireless propagation models in a well-known simulator, focusing on the packet delivery ratio, error rate and energy consumption. The different models are compared under different conditions, varying the node density and sending frequency of each scenario.