Challenges: a radically new architecture for next generation mobile ad hoc networks

Despite decades of research and development, mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) continue to lag behind wireline networks in terms of latency, capacity and robustness. We contend that a key reason for this is the way MANETs are thought about and architected today. We propose a radically new architecture that we believe will elevate MANETs to a performance plane on par with wireline networks. Our design concept for next generation MANETs is based on several revolutionary ideas - 1) a relay-oriented physical layer that selectively switches incoming packets "on-the-fly" without the intervention of the MAC or network layers, 2) a path-centric medium access mechanism that acquires the floor for not just the next, but several hops toward the destination, 3) cooperative transport of packets in stages using diversity combining. Our vision is to enable emerging and future very-low-latency, very-high-bandwidth applications to work seamlessly over large MANETs. Realizing our vision requires solving a number of challenging problems. We enumerate and briefly discuss these exciting new research areas.

[1]  Panganamala Ramana Kumar,et al.  Towards an information theory of large networks: an achievable rate region , 2003, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[2]  A. Khandani.  Cooperative Routing in Wireless Networks ∗ , 2003 .

[3]  Gregory W. Wornell,et al.  Cooperative diversity in wireless networks: Efficient protocols and outage behavior , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.

[4]  Man Hon Cheung,et al.  Cooperative Routing in UWB Wireless Networks , 2007, 2007 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference.

[5]  A. Ephremides,et al.  Algorithms for energy-efficient multicasting in ad hoc wireless networks , 1999, MILCOM 1999. IEEE Military Communications. Conference Proceedings (Cat. No.99CH36341).

[6]  David Gesbert,et al.  From theory to practice: an overview of MIMO space-time coded wireless systems , 2003, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun..

[7]  Terry L. Huston,et al.  Is telemedicine a practical reality? , 2000, CACM.

[8]  Matthew S. Gast,et al.  802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide , 2002 .

[9]  L. Kleinrock.  The latency/bandwidth tradeoff in gigabit networks , 1992, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[10]  Panganamala Ramana Kumar,et al.  A network information theory for wireless communication: scaling laws and optimal operation , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.

[11]  A.R. Barnes,et al.  A 2-18 GHz wideband high dynamic range receiver MMIC , 2002, 2002 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium. Digest of Papers (Cat. No.02CH37280).

[12]  Archan Misra,et al.  A label-switching packet forwarding architecture for multi-hop wireless LANs , 2002, WOWMOM '02.

[13]  Adam Wolisz,et al.  Queue-driven cut-through medium access in wireless ad hoc networks , 2004, 2004 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (IEEE Cat. No.04TH8733).

[14]  Josef Schroeder,et al.  Future Combat Systems , 2001 .

[15]  Zygmunt J. Haas,et al.  On the impact of alternate path routing for load balancing in mobile ad hoc networks , 2000, 2000 First Annual Workshop on Mobile and Ad Hoc Networking and Computing. MobiHOC (Cat. No.00EX444).

[16]  Michael A. Tope.  Performance evaluation of a cooperative diversity enhanced ad hoc network , 2002 .

[17]  Leonard Kleinrock,et al.  Virtual Cut-Through: A New Computer Communication Switching Technique , 1979, Comput. Networks.

[18]  Mario Gerla,et al.  Congestion control in asynchronous, high-speed wormhole routing networks , 1996, IEEE Commun. Mag..

[19]  Anna Scaglione,et al.  Opportunistic large arrays: cooperative transmission in wireless multihop ad hoc networks to reach far distances , 2003, IEEE Trans. Signal Process..

[20]  Joseph Y. Halpern,et al.  Gossip-based ad hoc routing , 2002, Proceedings.Twenty-First Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies.