DTN overlay on OLSR network

Abstract

Wireless Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) are characterized by frequent and unpredictable disconnections, due to mobility, interference, power management or any other issues. Such disconnections result in the failure of MANET routing protocols that are designed to establish end-to-end paths between the communicating nodes. This work focuses on enhancing the performance of MANETs by integrating MANET routing using Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) and Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) based store and forwarding. Further, we provide support for device heterogeneity by not requiring all the nodes in the network to be DTN capable. The non-DTN capable nodes can use the store and forward functionality of other DTN nodes in the network to combat the effect of network partitioning. We define a DTN-based OLSR, DTS-OLSR, with a new routing and discovery mechanism based on Structured Mesh Overlay Network (SMON) to fulfill the objectives. As a proof of concept, we implement DTS-OLSR where it is demonstrated that our scheme is successful in dealing with the problem of network partitioning. Our architecture mainly targets networks that can tolerate delay but require high reliability such as an ad hoc network constructed in an emergency scenario.