Mobility Aware Routing for Airborne Network

Airborne network is absolutely critical for the information superiority of the US armed forces as it will form an integral and inseparable part of the global information grid. The link characteristics of the airborne network are very different from those of fixed internet and the terrestrial mobile ad-hoc wireless networks, which make the routing problem for airborne network a unique and challenging one. The nodes of the airborne network are highly sophisticated airborne platforms with precise control and have the capability to compute optimal flight plans in advance. We propose a mobility dissemination/mobility aware routing protocol suite which leverages the advantages offered by the computational and sensing equipment on board airborne platforms. In this proposal, we outline the benefits offered by the proposed MDP/MARP protocol suite over existing routing protocols for fixed internet and mobile ad-hoc wireless networks. We propose the development of an AirborneNetEmulator which captures the link characteristics and other issues pertinent to airborne networks, for testing, evaluation and comparison of the proposed protocol suite. We have provided preliminary simulation examples in this proposal to validate our methodology. The Phase I effort will focus on developing AirborneNetEmulator, MDP/MARP protocol suite and comparison with existing routing protocols.