A Novel MANET Protocol Design for Auto-configuration and Efficient Service Provisioning

Abstract

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are a special class of networks which lack infrastructure components. In the current scenario practical realization of such networks is carried out by using Internet Protocol (IP) based architecture which was proposed four decades ago for infrastructure based fixed networks. Researchers have pointed out a number of technical problems in the IP based architecture, even when it is applied in infrastructure based networks like support for mobility, multi-homing, dual/overriding role of IP address, etc. Due to such problems contemporary researchers are proposing number of alternative architectures for replacing the IP based architecture. When Ad hoc networks like MANETs are realized by IP based architecture, multitude of technical problems will be required to be addressed. Along with the inherent deficiencies of IP based architecture some new issues specific to the ad hoc scenario like IP address auto-configuration, naming and name resolution, etc will also be required to be addressed. It is argued that application of IP based architecture for realizing ad hoc networks, especially MANETs, will require fulfillment of numerous challenging requirements and patches. Due to such technical issues ad hoc networking has extremely limited realization in real world applications. There exists number of constraints of IP based networking when it is applied in the ad hoc networking context. As an attempt to address such constraints an alternative architecture with the name ID based ad HOC NETwork (IDHOCNET) is proposed. Even though IDHOCNET is a non IP based architecture, it additionally supports all IP based applications. Almost all the research on ad hoc networking scenarios relies on simulation work. Simulation based validation hides many real-world issues of the system. Considering this aspect, the approach of prototype implementation has been adopted for the proof of concept of the proposed architecture. IDHOCNET gives solution to problems like IP address autoix of configuration, naming and name resolution and provides ease of implementation of ad hoc networks. Ad hoc networks are inherently bandwidth constrained. Therefore, in the pursuit of bandwidth conservation, IDHOCNET further provides a novel implementation of a multi-hop header compression scheme. Moreover, IDHOCNET provides implementation details of a novel application class which is called as ID based applications. A number of experiments have been conducted to demonstrate IP and ID based applications execution on a real multi-hop testbed. IDHOCNET data forwarding mechanisms is compared with traditional IP based ad hoc networks. It is observed that the bandwidth required for IDHOCNET is less than the traditional IP based implementation. Moreover, additional bandwidth is saved when header compression is applied in data forwarding. Hence the proposed architecture contributes significantly to efficient ad hoc network realization.