Thesis (MScEng (Electrical and Electronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / An ad-hoc network encompasses the cooperative engagement of a collection
of mobile nodes that are free to move and communicate with each other
wirelessly without the required intervention of any centralized access point
or existing infrastructure.
The advantage of such a network lies in it’s robustness, adaptiveness, the
fact that its self-configurable and that it becomes somewhat indestructible
due to it’s decentralized nature. But such a network layout simultaneously
introduces many complex network management issues which are normally
taken care of inherently by a rigid network architecture.
The biggest challenge faced by any such protocol is the fact that it needs
to be scalable, must maintain a decent stable data throughput, all whilst
performing it’s own continuous network management and associated routing
algorithms.
These mobile nodes need a complex, scalable, compact and essentially realtime
algorithm for maintaining an up to date representation of the overall
network layout, yet without clogging the system’s communications channels
with too much overhead traffic, and drastically lowering the effective data
throughput.
Since each mobile node only has a limited communications range each node
also needs very advanced routing capabilities which will allow it to track who
is currently within communications range, and at the same time allow the
node to create multihop paths to distant destination nodes, thus connecting
nodes which cannot directly communicate.
This report follows the development process of both the software needed
to successfully conceptualize, simulate and test the protocol, as well as the
hardware needed as proof of concept. It highlights and discusses the various
design choices / considerations made in development of such a protocol,
the strong- and weakpoints of the developed protocol, as well as providing
several possibilities to further evolve the developed protocol.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:sun/oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/2770 |
| Date | 12 1900 |
| Creators | Pretorius, Wynand |
| Contributors | Wolhuter, R., University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Engineering. Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. |
| Publisher | Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | University of Stellenbosch |
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