On developing interest-centric applications for ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc Networks (MANETs) pose significant shared communication medium constraints such as finite memory, number of access channels, and bandwidth, which make Quality of Experience (QoE) a critical issue for the development of applications. Furthermore, the use of multihop for message forwarding multiplies the amount of messages, increasing interference which in turn augments both channel contention and network congestion in the shared communication medium. The REP protocol for MANETs has been developed with these issues in mind. REP is an interest-centric communication protocol that generates minimal disturbance in the shared communication medium, thus enabling resource savings and allowing applications with QoE. REP introduces the Active Prefixes (APs), a new scheme for addressing, message forwarding, and interest-centric communication. An AP is composed of prefix (P) and interest (I), which every device builds P and each running application sets I. A service named REPD, using REP protocol, was implemented in Linux-based systems (Ubuntu and Android). Moreover, an API (REP API) provides basic communication functions that ease the development of interest-centric applications. The use of REPD service by mobile devices together with running applications create an interest-centric ad hoc network, which is called Radnet. As proof of concept for demonstrating the usability we implemented an interest-centric chat application using AP for running in a Radnet.