The Development of a Mobile Ad-Hoc Network Testbed: Modular Implementation of Ad-Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing

In communication systems, a Mobile Ad-Hoc Network (MANET) is a communication topology that has no central infrastructure, in contrast to more common network topologies such as Wi-fi or cellular towers. MANETs are of particular interest in the field as Internet-of-Things (IOT) applications and the push towards 6th-generation (6G) communications continues. MANET networks provide communication access to all nodes within the network using peer-to-peer communications, requiring extensive maintenance and updating of routes within the network as nodes move around. Routing protocols must be designed and used for these networks, and are typically complex algorithms that are difficult to implement on hardware. To combat this, this work presents a MANET testbed, designed to provide users with an Application Programming Interface (API) that separates routing protocol implementation from operating system functionality. To verify the testbed, this work also presents an implementation of Ad-Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing (AODV) that uses the provided API functions. By comparing simulation results from Network Simulator 3 (NS3), a physical implementation, and a physical implementation that uses firewall capabilities to form the network, a full evaluation of AODV and the MANET testbed is performed

Concept and design of the hybrid distributed embedded systems testbed

Wireless mesh networks are an emerging and versatile communication technology. The most common application of these networks is to provide access of any number of users to the world wide Internet. They can be set up by Internet service providers or even individuals joined in communities. Due to the wireless medium that is shared by all participants, effects like short-time fading, or the multi-hop property of the network topology many issues are still in the focus of research. Testbeds are a powerful tool to study wireless mesh networks as close as possible to real world application scenarios. In this technical report we describe the design, architecture, and implementation of our work-in-progress wireless testbed at Freie Universität Berlin consisting of 100 mesh routers that span multiple buildings. The testbed is hybrid as it combines wireless mesh network routers with a wireless sensor network

PAMPA in the wild:a real-life evaluation of a lightweight ad-hoc broadcasting family

Broadcast is one of the core building blocks of many services deployed on ad-hoc wireless networks, such as Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs) or Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Most broadcast protocols are however only ever evaluated using simulations, which have repeatedly been shown to be unreliable, and potentially misleading. In this paper, we seek to go beyond simulations, and consider the particular case of PAMPA, a promising family of wireless broadcast algorithms for ad-hoc and wireless networks. We report on our efforts to further our experimental understanding of PAMPA, and present the first ever characterisation of the PAMPA family on a real deployment. Here it has to deal with real network problems such as node, message and sending failure. Our experiments show that the standard PAMPA algorithm out-performs all other protocols in the family, with a delivery ratio consistently around 75%, and a retransmission ratio as low as 44%, for a failure-free run. We use this opportunity to reflect on our findings and lessons learnt when moving from simulations to actual experimentsab

Utility of hybrid wireless experimentation for evaluation of heterogeneous wireless architectures and cross-layer protocols

We consider hybrid wireless experimentation, which has emerged as an alternative and complementary methodology to physical experimentation and simulation for wireless network evaluation. Specifically, our focus in this paper is on WHYNET, a flexible hybrid evaluation framework providing the capability to seamlessly integrate simulated, emulated and physical networks, thereby enabling several ways of realizing a given target wireless network scenario each using physical (operational) and simulated elements in different combinations depending on the evaluation needs and available testbed resources. Using two novel and detailed case studies of WHYNET, we demonstrate the utility of the hybrid approach for realistic, scalable and cost-effective evaluation of heterogeneous wireless network scenarios and cross-layer protocol mechanisms

Gain More for Less: The Surprising Benefits of QoS Management in Constrained NDN Networks

Quality of Service (QoS) in the IP world mainly manages forwarding resources, i.e., link capacities and buffer spaces. In addition, Information Centric Networking (ICN) offers resource dimensions such as in-network caches and forwarding state. In constrained wireless networks, these resources are scarce with a potentially high impact due to lossy radio transmission. In this paper, we explore the two basic service qualities (i) prompt and (ii) reliable traffic forwarding for the case of NDN. The resources we take into account are forwarding and queuing priorities, as well as the utilization of caches and of forwarding state space. We treat QoS resources not only in isolation, but correlate their use on local nodes and between network members. Network-wide coordination is based on simple, predefined QoS code points. Our findings indicate that coordinated QoS management in ICN is more than the sum of its parts and exceeds the impact QoS can have in the IP world