Peer to peer communications among mobile ground units in Ad-Hoc environment

Mobile Ad Hoc networks (MANET) are essential in situations where no communications infrastructure exists and the communicating entities are mobile. Design of such MANETs face serious challenges due to the dynamic topologies resulting in frequent route breaks and failed medium access attempts as nodes move and in some cases due to lack of scalable solutions as the number of communicating nodes increase. Such challenges are best addressed through new robust MANET architectures that are not constrained by current protocol structures, algorithms and operational hierarchy. In this article one such solution is investigated for terrestrial mobile nodes that exchange streaming data. The architecture integrates essential MANET functions using an algorithm to enable the coordinated operation of the functions. The solution is evaluated and compared with implementations using Optimized Link State routing (OLSR) with IEEE 802.11 Distribute Coordination Function (DCF) medium access control (MAC) and also with Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol with IEEE 802.11 DCF MAC for network sizes of twenty and forty nodes. The nodes moved at speeds from 3 m/s to 15 m/s using random waypoint mobility model with zero pause times. Performance results from models based on Opnet are presented to validate the robust routing and MAC of the proposed MANET architecture.