Development of Geocasting Protocols for a Mobile Ad Hoc Network

Project Team: Tracy Camp, William Navidi, Peiling Yao

Sponsor: National Science Foundation

The goal of a geocasting protocol is to deliver a packet to a set of nodes within a specified geographical area, i.e., the geocast region. As an example, during a rescue/emergency operation, consider the benefits of delivering a message that states ``immediate help needed at 950 Illinois Street'' to all rescue personnel in the 900 block of Illinois Street. Unlike our static network, membership in a geocast region within an ad hoc network changes whenever a mobile node moves in/out of the geocast region. This project concerns the development and evaluation of protocols that offer geocast communication to both explicitly defined groups (i.e., geocast to those mobile nodes in the geocast region that have registered with the group) and implicitly defined groups (i.e., geocast to all mobile nodes in the geocast region) within an ad hoc network.

Distributed Adaptive Protocols for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Project Team: William Navidi, Tracy Camp, Jeff Boleng, Stuart Kurkowski

Sponsor: National Science Foundation

Although mobile ad hoc network protocols have been extensively studied and simulated in the past few years, several comparative studies have shown that there is no single routing protocol which works well in a wide variety of network conditions.  A truly effective routing protocol will combine the strengths of the best existing protocols while avoiding their weaknesses.  A distributed adaptive scheme that responds to the current network dynamics at each node shows promise in achieving this goal. This project concerns the development of methods to allow unicast, multicast, geocast, and location-based protocols to adapt.

Characterizing Protocol Interaction in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Project Team: Tracy Camp, Michael Colagrosso

Sponsor: National Science Foundation

Traditionally, network protocols are organized as a series of layers each built on the one below it and the layered protocol design philosophy has predominated the development of mobile ad hoc network protocols.  While the network and MAC layer protocols that have emerged are excellent solutions in isolation, by design these protocols interact through an interlayer interface.  As a result the protocols affect one another, both directly and indirectly; this interaction, however, is not well studied or understood. Characterizing how and to what extent protocols interact will ultimately impact network performance. In this project, we study the network and MAC layer protocol interaction in mobile ad hoc networks in the context of a distributed location service utilizing smart antennas.  A distributed location service provides a mechanism to obtain the current position of a mobile node.

Mobility Models for Mobile Ad Hoc Network Simulations

Project Team: Tracy Camp, William Navidi

In the performance evaluation of a protocol for an ad hoc network, the protocol should be tested under realistic conditions including, but not limited to, a sensible transmission range, limited buffer space for the storage of messages, representative data traffic models, and realistic movements of the mobile users (i.e., a mobility model). This project has two related goals.  First, to develop realistic mobility models from movement data collected on wireless users. Second, to develop stationary distributions of mobility models used in mobile ad hoc network simulations.

Intelligent Network-wide Broadcast Protocols for a Mobile Ad Hoc Network

Project Team: Michael Colagrosso, Tracy Camp, Stuart Kurkowski

Network-wide broadcasting functions as a foundation of mobile ad hoc network communication; it is a building block for many other network layer protocols, providing important control and route establishment functionality.  Thus, any improvement to broadcast performance immediately impacts the performance of other network layer protocols. While several candidate broadcast protocols have been drafted, no single protocol adequately performs in all possible network conditions. This project concerns the development of novel network-wide broadcasting protocols that use machine learning as a design principle.  Our goal is to develop protocols that will automatically improve through experience.