ANJUMAN – I – ISLAM’S ALLANA INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES

MOBILE AD-HOC
NETWORKS AND THEIR
APPLICATIONS
Awesh Bhornya (7) & Mohammed Akram Shaikh (46)
Introduction
 A mobile ad-hoc network is a collection of autonomous mobile nodes that communicate with each
other over wireless links without any central administration. In ad-hoc networks, each host has to
act as a router for itself to communicate with hosts outside its transmission range due to the limited
range of each host's wireless transmission. They are very flexible and easy to use and understand.

 An ad-hoc routing protocol runs on every host and is subject to the limit of the resources at each
mobile host. Therefore, a traditional routing protocol, which is used in IP network, is not suitable to
the ad-hoc network. Also, it is not appropriate to use conventional protocols, which are proposed or
used in IP networks, such as MAC, QoS, Multicast, and TCP.

A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) consists of mobile hosts equipped with wireless communication
devices. The transmission of a mobile host is received by all hosts within its transmission range due
to the broadcast nature of wireless communication and Omni-directional antennae. If two wireless
hosts are out of their transmission ranges in the ad hoc networks, other mobile hosts located
between them can forward their messages, which effectively build connected networks among the
mobile hosts in the deployed area. Due to the mobility of wireless hosts, each host needs to be
equipped with the capability of an autonomous system, or a routing function without any statically
established infrastructure or centralized administration. The mobile hosts can move arbitrarily and
can be turned on or off without notifying other hosts. The mobility and autonomy introduces a
dynamic topology of the networks not only because end-hosts are transient but also because
intermediate hosts on a communication path are transient.

Characteristics of MANETS

 Operating without a central coordinator

  Multi-hop radio relaying
 Frequent link breakage due to mobile nodes
 Constraint resources (bandwidth, computing power, battery lifetime, etc.)
 Instant deployment

Applications of MANETS

 Military applications
 Collaborative computing
 Emergency rescue
 Mesh networks
 Wireless sensor networks
 Multi-hop cellular networks
 Wireless Community Network

Major Issues and Challenges with MANETS

 Hidden terminal problem

 Exposed terminal problem
 Channel efficiency
 Access delay and fairness
 Differential service
 Realistic mobility modelling
 power-aware routing
 Constructing virtual backbone
 Distinguish contention, packet drop, and noise errors
 Security
 Efficient multicasting
Wireless LAN MAC

Wireless LAN

 Medium access control protocols define the rules that allow devices to share the medium in an
efficient and orderly manner. In contrast to the wired LAN MAC protocols, wireless LAN MAC
protocols should cope with the unique properties of wireless medium: half duplex mode, time
varying and bursty channel, location dependent carrier sensing, hidden and exposed terminal
problems, etc. These properties of the wireless medium make the design of MAC protocols
particularly difficult and challenging.

 Wireless MAC issues in which we are currently interested are as follows:

◆ Distributed and Centralized MAC Protocols

◆ IEEE 802.11 MAC Protocol Family (802.11a/b/e)
◆ ETSI HIPERLAN Type 2
◆ Providing QoS Guarantees in Wireless MAC Protocols
VANET (Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks)

Vehicular Ad hoc Networks

 Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET) is a subset of mobile ad-hoc network, which supports data
communications among nearby vehicles and between vehicles and nearby fixed infrastructure, and
generally represented as roadside entities. Depending on the range of data communications, nodes
in VANET communicate among themselves in type of short-range (vehicle-to-vehicle) or medium-
range (vehicle-to-roadside) communications.

 In addition, the major application view of VANETs includes real-time and safety applications. Non-
safety applications include real-time traffic congestion and routing information, high-speed tolling,
mobile infotainment, traffic condition monitoring, and many others. Vehicular safety applications
include emergency, collision, car accident, and other safety warnings. For high performance, highly
robust, scalable, robust, fault tolerant, and secure vehicular networking, several extraordinary
challenges are remained as follows:

◆ Safety and commercial applications

◆ Mobility and traffic models
◆ Channel Modeling
◆ Security and privacy
◆ Cooperative aspects of vehicular communication
◆ Cross-layer optimization techniques
◆ Vehicle-to-Vehicle
◆ Vehicle-to-Roadside
◆ Scalability and Availability issues in Vehicular networks
◆ PHY, MAC, Network Layer (Routing protocols)
WPAN (Bluetooth, Zigbee, etc.)

Wireless Personal Area Network

 Wireless personal area networks (WPANs) cover smaller areas with low power transmission for
network of portable and mobile computing devices such as PCs and personal digital assistants
(PDAs). The portable consumer electronics and communications devices are essentially very small
computers designed to consume as little power as possible in order to increase the lifetime of their
batteries.

As the above features of WPANs, there are some issues to provide efficient communications in
WPANs:

◆ High Precision Ranging/Location Capability

◆ High Aggregate Throughput
◆ Low Power Consumption
◆ Low Cost