An Integrated Robust and Auto-Configurable Network Service Protocol Suite for Wireless Airborne Networks

The envisioned Airbone Network (AN) is expected to provide seamless connectivity for a large number of applications, which require proper network service support. Our Phase I efforts present a basic version of an integrated architecture for network service. In Phase II, we will further refine the architecture by including new service elements, aiming to develop a complete solution for network services in ANs. The network services we will address include address configuration, name resolution, time synchronization, security services, and policy services. Although not all the network services are described in detail, the proposed integrated architecture is believed to be capable of accommodating other services. The significant advantages of the proposed approach can be summarized as follows: 1) it is impervious to network dynamics; 2) it can operate autonomously without connectivity to ground nodes; 3) the distributed hierarchical network service structure improves scalability, reliability and robustness; and 4) as we implement different services in a common basis, server election, service advertisement/discovery, and service architecture maintenance are performed by the common distributed clustering process, which in turn renders efficiency. To our best knowledge, our work represents the first complete solution that provides robust, scalable, auto-configurable and efficient network service support for ANs.