A Thin Layer Approach to Highly Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Today’s warfare is network centric and relies on efficient communications on the move. To support these requirements, wireless mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) have received a lot of attention because of self deployment and reconfiguration properties. Unfortunately, wireless networks in mobile environments face formidable challenges – from radio propagation effects to external jamming, path breakage and intermittent connectivity. Current radio platforms are not adequate for the challenge. While awaiting for more sophisticated radios (eg, SDRs and MIMO radios) that will alleviate the problem using physical layer techniques, in this Phase I project we propose to develop a “thin” software layer that transparently interacts with other layers. The thin layer exploits and in fact manages preexisting layer “redundancies” such as multiple paths and link layer retransmissions. The thin layer will support two independent coding techniques, namely, erasure/rateless coding (at the end-to-end level) and network coding (at the packet forwarding level). Nodes can successfully recover from packet losses by efficiently exploiting the redundancy intrinsic of each layer. We will compare these schemes with an aggressive modeling and simulation campaign.