The development of a dynamically configured wireless ad-hoc multihop network protocol

[摘要] An ad-hoc network encompasses the cooperative engagement of a collectionof mobile nodes that are free to move and communicate with each otherwirelessly without the required intervention of any centralized access pointor existing infrastructure.The advantage of such a network lies in it's robustness, adaptiveness, thefact that its self-configurable and that it becomes somewhat indestructibledue to it's decentralized nature. But such a network layout simultaneouslyintroduces many complex network management issues which are normallytaken care of inherently by a rigid network architecture.The biggest challenge faced by any such protocol is the fact that it needsto be scalable, must maintain a decent stable data throughput, all whilstperforming it's own continuous network management and associated routingalgorithms.These mobile nodes need a complex, scalable, compact and essentially realtimealgorithm for maintaining an up to date representation of the overallnetwork layout, yet without clogging the system's communications channelswith too much overhead traffic, and drastically lowering the effective datathroughput.Since each mobile node only has a limited communications range each nodealso needs very advanced routing capabilities which will allow it to track whois currently within communications range, and at the same time allow thenode to create multihop paths to distant destination nodes, thus connectingnodes which cannot directly communicate.This report follows the development process of both the software neededto successfully conceptualize, simulate and test the protocol, as well as thehardware needed as proof of concept. It highlights and discusses the variousdesign choices / considerations made in development of such a protocol,the strong- and weakpoints of the developed protocol, as well as providingseveral possibilities to further evolve the developed protocol.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University