S-ROGUE: Routing protocol for Unmanned Systems on the Surface

International audienceThe cooperation of heterogeneous unmanned systems , for instance, between aerial engines and terrestrial engines, relies on reliable communication. Data delivery is ensured by routing protocols, but traditional routing approaches, MANET and DTN, are not efficient in such networks. In this paper, we propose the S-ROGUE routing protocol combining the paradigms MANET and DTN and switching between them according to the network connectivity. On the one hand, the S-ROGUE MANET algorithm relies on a proactive approach and a novel metric to anticipate link disruptions and detect unidirectional links. On the other hand, the S-ROGUE DTN algorithm uses on a reinforcement learning technique to select the best routing action. It implements also a replication control and packet prioritization to improve routing performances. We lead a performance evaluation of S-ROGUE with similar routing protocols in realistic simulated environments and conclude that S-ROGUE has the best routing performance regardless the scenarios

On Leveraging Partial Paths in Partially-Connected Networks

Mobile wireless network research focuses on scenarios at the extremes of the network connectivity continuum where the probability of all nodes being connected is either close to unity, assuming connected paths between all nodes (mobile ad hoc networks), or it is close to zero, assuming no multi-hop paths exist at all (delay-tolerant networks). In this paper, we argue that a sizable fraction of networks lies between these extremes and is characterized by the existence of partial paths, i.e. multi-hop path segments that allow forwarding data closer to the destination even when no end-to-end path is available. A fundamental issue in such networks is dealing with disruptions of end-to-end paths. Under a stochastic model, we compare the performance of the established end-to-end retransmission (ignoring partial paths), against a forwarding mechanism that leverages partial paths to forward data closer to the destination even during disruption periods. Perhaps surprisingly, the alternative mechanism is not necessarily superior. However, under a stochastic monotonicity condition between current v.s. future path length, which we demonstrate to hold in typical network models, we manage to prove superiority of the alternative mechanism in stochastic dominance terms. We believe that this study could serve as a foundation to design more efficient data transfer protocols for partially-connected networks, which could potentially help reducing the gap between applications that can be supported over disconnected networks and those requiring full connectivity.Comment: Extended version of paper appearing at IEEE INFOCOM 2009, April 20-25, Rio de Janeiro, Brazi

Overview of Hybrid MANET-DTN Networking and its Potential for Emergency Response Operations

Communication networks for emergency response operations have to operate in harsh environments. As fixed infrastructures may be unavailable (e.g., they are destroyed or overloaded), mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) are a promising solution to establish communication for emergency response operations. However, networks for emergency responses may provide diverse connectivity characteristics which imposes some challenges, especially on routing. Routing protocols need to take transmission errors, node failures and even the partitioning of the network into account. Thus, there is a need for routing algorithms that provide mechanisms from Delay or Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) in order to cope with network disruptions but at the same time are as efficient as MANET routing schemes in order to preserve network resources. This paper reviews several hybrid MANET-DTN routing schemes that can be found in the literature. Additionally, the paper evaluates a realistic emergency response scenario and shows that MANET-DTN routing schemes have the potential to improve network performance as the resulting network is diverse in terms of connectivity. In particular, the network provides well-connected regions whereas other parts are only intermittently connected

Implementation of Epidemic Routing with IP Convergence Layer in ns-3

We present the Epidemic routing protocol implementation in ns-3. It is a full-featured DTN protocol in that it supports the message abstraction and store-and-haul behavior. We compare the performance of our Epidemic routing ns-3 implementation with the existing implementation of Epidemic in the ONE simulator, and discuss the differences

Securing Marine Data Networks in an IoT Environment

With the huge proliferation of sensory applications, the Internet of Things (IoT) is promising connectivity capacity far beyond the conventional computing platforms, with an ultimate goal of connecting all everyday objects. Sensory applications in the marine environment are foreseen to be an integral part of this connected world, forming the Internet of Marine Things (IoMaT). While some efforts that aim to establish network connectivity in such a sparse environment exist, securing these networks is still an unreached goal. This paper introduces a secure Mobile Ad-hoc/Delay Tolerant routing protocol (S-MADNET) for the marine environment over VHF equipment available on the majority of ships. The proposed secure network is designed to use the existing Automatic Identification System (AIS) that ships use for positioning and navigation aid. An IoMaT routing module that forwards marine sensory data using the proposed secure protocol is also presented, taking the AIS system level considerations into account. Furthermore, a new AIS message format with IoMaT support is proposed that accommodates the requirements of the secure routing protocol. Evaluation results show that the proposed S-MADNET routing protocol outperforms its counterparts in terms of packet delivery rates and packet duplication rates, while maintaining data security

A Survey on Multihop Ad Hoc Networks for Disaster Response Scenarios

Disastrous events are one of the most challenging applications of multihop ad hoc networks due to possible damages of existing telecommunication infrastructure.The deployed cellular communication infrastructure might be partially or completely destroyed after a natural disaster. Multihop ad hoc communication is an interesting alternative to deal with the lack of communications in disaster scenarios. They have evolved since their origin, leading to differentad hoc paradigms such as MANETs, VANETs, DTNs, or WSNs.This paper presents a survey on multihop ad hoc network paradigms for disaster scenarios.It highlights their applicability to important tasks in disaster relief operations. More specifically, the paper reviews the main work found in the literature, which employed ad hoc networks in disaster scenarios.In addition, it discusses the open challenges and the future research directions for each different ad hoc paradigm

The Quest for a Killer App for Opportunistic and Delay Tolerant Networks (Invited Paper)

Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) has attracted a lot of attention from the research community in recent years. Much work have been done regarding network architectures and algorithms for routing and forwarding in such networks. At the same time as many show enthusiasm for this exciting new research area there are also many sceptics, who question the usefulness of research in this area. In the past, we have seen other research areas become over-hyped and later die out as there was no killer app for them that made them useful in real scenarios. Real deployments of DTN systems have so far mostly been limited to a few niche scenarios, where they have been done as proof-of-concept field tests in research projects. In this paper, we embark upon a quest to find out what characterizes a potential killer applications for DTNs. Are there applications and situations where DTNs provide services that could not be achieved otherwise, or have potential to do it in a better way than other techniques? Further, we highlight some of the main challenges that needs to be solved to realize these applications and make DTNs a part of the mainstream network landscape

Routing in a many-to-one communication scenario in a realistic VDTN

In this paper, we evaluate and compare the performance of different routing protocols in a many-to-one communication within a Vehicular Delay Tolerant Network (VDTN). Seven groups with three stationary sensor nodes sense the temperature, humidity and wind speed and send these data to a stationary destination node that collect them for statistical and data analysis purposes. Vehicles moving in Tirana city roads in Albania during the opportunistic contacts will exchange the sensed data to destination node. The simulations are conducted with the Opportunistic Network Environment (ONE) simulator. For the simulations we considered two different scenarios where the distance of the source nodes from the destination is short and long. For both scenarios the effect of node density, ttl and node movement model is evaluated. The performance is analyzed using delivery probability, overhead ratio, average latency, average number of hops and average buffer time metrics. The simulation results show that the increase of node density increases the delivery probability for all protocols and both scenarios, and better results are achieved when shortest-path map-based movement model is used. The increase of ttl slightly affects the performance of all protocols. By increasing the distance between source nodes and destination node, delivery probability is decreased almost 10% for all protocols, the overhead for sprayandwait protocol does not change, but for other protocols is slightly increased and the average number of hops and average latency is increased.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A DTN routing scheme for quasi-deterministic networks with application to LEO satellites topology

We propose a novel DTN routing algorithm, called DQN, specifically designed for quasi-deterministic networks with an application to satellite constellations. We demonstrate that our proposal efficiently forwards the information over a satellite network derived from the Orbcomm topology while keeping a low replication overhead. We compare our algorithm against other well-known DTN routing schemes and show that we obtain the lowest replication ratio without the knowledge of the topology and with a delivery ratio of the same order of magnitude than a reference theoretical optimal routing