Environment–Mobility Interaction Mapping for Cognitive MANETs

Cognitive MANETs are likely to be complex radio systems. We already know that no single MANET solution can address all environments that may be encountered; such is the rationale of an ad hoc network that it must address the networking demands of unforeseen scenarios. Rather, a cognitive MANET should be viewed as a feature-rich radio system, i.e. one which has access to a range of radio and network components, each suited to different demands. Such a reconfigurable system requires cognitive functionality to self-architect the radios when they are deployed in addition to the cognitive functionality required for the various layers to self-organise. However, any cognitive decision-making process requires awareness of the world for which it is trying to optimise the system. This chapter introduces the concept of an environment–mobility interaction map, a persistent internal representation of the network which captures the presence of areas in the network’s environment in which particular, sustained, mobility dynamics are observed. Such a self-generated map enables the cognitive MANET to plan a response to challenges brought about by these network dynamics.