EVA Radio DRATS 2011 Report

In the Fall of 2011, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Glenn Research Center (GRC) participated in the Desert Research and Technology Studies (DRATS) field experiments held near Flagstaff, Arizona. The objective of the DRATS outing is to provide analog mission testing of candidate technologies for space exploration, especially those technologies applicable to human exploration of extra- terrestrial rocky bodies. These activities are performed at locations with similarities to extra-terrestrial conditions. This report describes the Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Dual-Band Radio Communication System which was demonstrated during the 2011 outing. The EVA radio system is designed to transport both voice and telemetry data through a mobile ad hoc wireless network and employs a dual-band radio configuration. Some key characteristics of this system include: 1. Dual-band radio configuration. 2. Intelligent switching between two different capability wireless networks. 3. Self-healing network. 4. Simultaneous data and voice communication

Adoption of vehicular ad hoc networking protocols by networked robots

This paper focuses on the utilization of wireless networking in the robotics domain. Many researchers have already equipped their robots with wireless communication capabilities, stimulated by the observation that multi-robot systems tend to have several advantages over their single-robot counterparts. Typically, this integration of wireless communication is tackled in a quite pragmatic manner, only a few authors presented novel Robotic Ad Hoc Network (RANET) protocols that were designed specifically with robotic use cases in mind. This is in sharp contrast with the domain of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET). This observation is the starting point of this paper. If the results of previous efforts focusing on VANET protocols could be reused in the RANET domain, this could lead to rapid progress in the field of networked robots. To investigate this possibility, this paper provides a thorough overview of the related work in the domain of robotic and vehicular ad hoc networks. Based on this information, an exhaustive list of requirements is defined for both types. It is concluded that the most significant difference lies in the fact that VANET protocols are oriented towards low throughput messaging, while RANET protocols have to support high throughput media streaming as well. Although not always with equal importance, all other defined requirements are valid for both protocols. This leads to the conclusion that cross-fertilization between them is an appealing approach for future RANET research. To support such developments, this paper concludes with the definition of an appropriate working plan

Analysis, evaluation and improvement of RT-WMP for real-time and QoS wireless communication: Applications in confined environments

En los ultimos años, la innovación tecnológica, la característica de flexibilidad y el rápido despligue de las redes inalámbricas, han favorecido la difusión de la redes móviles ad-hoc (MANETs), capaces de ofrecer servicios para tareas específicas entre nodos móviles. Los aspectos relacionados al dinamismo de la topología móvil y el acceso a un medio compartido por naturaleza hacen que sea preciso enfrentarse a clases de problemas distintos de los relacionados con la redes cableadas, atrayendo de este modo el interés de la comunidad científica. Las redes ad-hoc suelen soportar tráfico con garantía de servicio mínimo y la mayor parte de las propuestas presentes en literatura tratan de dar garantías de ancho de banda o minimizar el retardo de los mensajes. Sin embargo hay situaciones en las que estas garantías no son suficientes. Este es el caso de los sistemas que requieren garantías mas fuertes en la entrega de los mensajes, como es el caso de los sistemas de tiempo real donde la pérdida o el retraso de un sólo mensaje puede provocar problemas graves. Otras aplicaciones como la videoconferencia, cada vez más extendidas, implican un tráfico de datos con requisitos diferentes, como la calidad de servicio (QoS). Los requisitos de tiempo real y de QoS añaden nuevos retos al ya exigente servicio de comunicación inalámbrica entre estaciones móviles de una MANET. Además, hay aplicaciones en las que hay que tener en cuenta algo más que el simple encaminamiento de los mensajes. Este es el caso de aplicaciones en entornos subterráneos, donde el conocimiento de la evolución de propagación de la señal entre los diferentes nodos puede ser útil para mejorar la calidad de servicio y mantener la conectividad en cada momento. A pesar de ésto, dentro del amplio abanicos de propuestas presente en la literatura, existen un conjunto de limitaciones que van de el mero uso de protocolos simulados a propuestas que no tienen en cuenta entornos no convencionales o que resultan aisladas desde el punto de vista de la integración en sistemas complejos. En esta tesis doctoral, se propone un estudio completo sobre un plataforma inalámbrica de tiempo real, utilizando el protocolo RT-WMP capaz de gestionar trafíco multimedia al mismo tiempo y adaptado al entorno de trabajo. Se propone una extensión para el soporte a los datos con calidad de servicio sin limitar las caractaristícas temporales del protocolo básico. Y con el fin de tener en cuenta el efecto de la propagación de la señal, se caracteriza el entorno por medio de un conjunto de restricciones de conectividad. La solución ha sido desarrollada y su validez ha sido demostrada extensamente en aplicaciones reales en entornos subterráneos, en redes malladas y aplicaciones robóticas

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Guiding readers through the basics of these rapidly emerging networks to more advanced concepts and future expectations, Mobile Ad hoc Networks: Current Status and Future Trends identifies and examines the most pressing research issues in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs). Containing the contributions of leading researchers, industry professionals, and academics, this forward-looking reference provides an authoritative perspective of the state of the art in MANETs. The book includes surveys of recent publications that investigate key areas of interest such as limited resources and the mobility of mobile nodes. It considers routing, multicast, energy, security, channel assignment, and ensuring quality of service. Also suitable as a text for graduate students, the book is organized into three sections: Fundamentals of MANET Modeling and Simulation—Describes how MANETs operate and perform through simulations and models Communication Protocols of MANETs—Presents cutting-edge research on key issues, including MAC layer issues and routing in high mobility Future Networks Inspired By MANETs—Tackles open research issues and emerging trends Illustrating the role MANETs are likely to play in future networks, this book supplies the foundation and insight you will need to make your own contributions to the field. It includes coverage of routing protocols, modeling and simulations tools, intelligent optimization techniques to multicriteria routing, security issues in FHAMIPv6, connecting moving smart objects to the Internet, underwater sensor networks, wireless mesh network architecture and protocols, adaptive routing provision using Bayesian inference, and adaptive flow control in transport layer using genetic algorithms

Mesh-Mon: a Monitoring and Management System for Wireless Mesh Networks

A mesh network is a network of wireless routers that employ multi-hop routing and can be used to provide network access for mobile clients. Mobile mesh networks can be deployed rapidly to provide an alternate communication infrastructure for emergency response operations in areas with limited or damaged infrastructure. In this dissertation, we present Dart-Mesh: a Linux-based layer-3 dual-radio two-tiered mesh network that provides complete 802.11b coverage in the Sudikoff Lab for Computer Science at Dartmouth College. We faced several challenges in building, testing, monitoring and managing this network. These challenges motivated us to design and implement Mesh-Mon, a network monitoring system to aid system administrators in the management of a mobile mesh network. Mesh-Mon is a scalable, distributed and decentralized management system in which mesh nodes cooperate in a proactive manner to help detect, diagnose and resolve network problems automatically. Mesh-Mon is independent of the routing protocol used by the mesh routing layer and can function even if the routing protocol fails. We demonstrate this feature by running Mesh-Mon on two versions of Dart-Mesh, one running on AODV (a reactive mesh routing protocol) and the second running on OLSR (a proactive mesh routing protocol) in separate experiments. Mobility can cause links to break, leading to disconnected partitions. We identify critical nodes in the network, whose failure may cause a partition. We introduce two new metrics based on social-network analysis: the Localized Bridging Centrality (LBC) metric and the Localized Load-aware Bridging Centrality (LLBC) metric, that can identify critical nodes efficiently and in a fully distributed manner. We run a monitoring component on client nodes, called Mesh-Mon-Ami, which also assists Mesh-Mon nodes in the dissemination of management information between physically disconnected partitions, by acting as carriers for management data. We conclude, from our experimental evaluation on our 16-node Dart-Mesh testbed, that our system solves several management challenges in a scalable manner, and is a useful and effective tool for monitoring and managing real-world mesh networks

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Guiding readers through the basics of these rapidly emerging networks to more advanced concepts and future expectations, Mobile Ad hoc Networks: Current Status and Future Trends identifies and examines the most pressing research issues in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs). Containing the contributions of leading researchers, industry professionals, and academics, this forward-looking reference provides an authoritative perspective of the state of the art in MANETs. The book includes surveys of recent publications that investigate key areas of interest such as limited resources and the mobility of mobile nodes. It considers routing, multicast, energy, security, channel assignment, and ensuring quality of service. Also suitable as a text for graduate students, the book is organized into three sections: Fundamentals of MANET Modeling and Simulation—Describes how MANETs operate and perform through simulations and models Communication Protocols of MANETs—Presents cutting-edge research on key issues, including MAC layer issues and routing in high mobility Future Networks Inspired By MANETs—Tackles open research issues and emerging trends Illustrating the role MANETs are likely to play in future networks, this book supplies the foundation and insight you will need to make your own contributions to the field. It includes coverage of routing protocols, modeling and simulations tools, intelligent optimization techniques to multicriteria routing, security issues in FHAMIPv6, connecting moving smart objects to the Internet, underwater sensor networks, wireless mesh network architecture and protocols, adaptive routing provision using Bayesian inference, and adaptive flow control in transport layer using genetic algorithms

Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks

In this chapter, we present a literature survey of an emerging, cutting-edge, and multi-disciplinary field of research at the intersection of Robotics and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which we refer to as Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks (RWSN). We define a RWSN as an autonomous networked multi-robot system that aims to achieve certain sensing goals while meeting and maintaining certain communication performance requirements, through cooperative control, learning and adaptation. While both of the component areas, i.e., Robotics and WSN, are very well-known and well-explored, there exist a whole set of new opportunities and research directions at the intersection of these two fields which are relatively or even completely unexplored. One such example would be the use of a set of robotic routers to set up a temporary communication path between a sender and a receiver that uses the controlled mobility to the advantage of packet routing. We find that there exist only a limited number of articles to be directly categorized as RWSN related works whereas there exist a range of articles in the robotics and the WSN literature that are also relevant to this new field of research. To connect the dots, we first identify the core problems and research trends related to RWSN such as connectivity, localization, routing, and robust flow of information. Next, we classify the existing research on RWSN as well as the relevant state-of-the-arts from robotics and WSN community according to the problems and trends identified in the first step. Lastly, we analyze what is missing in the existing literature, and identify topics that require more research attention in the future