This paper presents properties of a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) with dynamic spectrum management (DSM) and is devoted to the concept and implementation of the new traffic engine that is used in a High-Fidelity simulator of MANET with cognitive nodes for special applications. The communication traffic generated by each node is defined according to its role in the hierarchical structure of the operational scenario, determining its priorities, permission to use particular real time and non-real time services. The service usage is a source based model, defined in the user’s profile containing its statistical properties, describing periodicity, duration and randomness of traffic generation. The overall traffic generated by the node is a combination of traffics related to specific services. Their statistical parameters are based on real exercises results. The model was defined in the Matlab environment and next verified using the MAENA simulator for complex, operational scenarios. The achieved results show that use of both central and distributed DSM provides a better performance of the MANET network with complex traffic.