An OLSR extension to deal with predefined groups

MANETs (Mobile Ad hoc NETworks) allow to deploy networks without any preexisting infrastructure. They are appealing approach for battlefield and emergency networks since they allow to easily interconnect the units that are engaged on the field. An unit is a predefined group of users working together to accomplish a specific task. With this idea we decided to extend the OLSR (Optimized Link State Routing) protocol to take advantages of these predefined groups. All nodes in the network belong to a predefined group and we want to ensure their communication capacities even if they are scattered on the field. Our approach consists in dividing the MANET in groups of nodes: the nodes of a given group belong to the same predefined group (i.e., the same unit), and communications between them only rely on nodes of this group. Thus, a given unit corresponds to either a single group of nodes in the MANET, or a set of groups if the unit is scattered. In this later case, by extending OLSR, we propose a mechanism that allows to interconnect the scattered groups of the same unit. All the modifications we detailed in the article are done with small changes to the OLSR protocol, the majority of the work is on the internal logic more than the messages themselves.