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Past Work

Evaluation and Analysis of Routing Protocols for MANETs in a Military Environment
 
We worked closely with other organizations -- DARPA, SAIC, CECOM, MITRE, SRI, and SAINC -- on this project.  NIST's role and activities centered around two areas: (1) verification/validation of the SEAMLSS network modeling and simulation tool developed by the DARPA Global Mobile Information Systems (GloMo) Program, and (2) development of methodologies for evaluation of the MANET technologies developed in the DARPA GloMo programs as well as MANET routing protocols proposed in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) MANET Working Group using SEAMLSS and for military scenarios. DARPA developed SEAMLSS with the goals of providing the capability to test, demonstrate, and evaluate the scalability of GloMo communications technology for realistic military usage scenarios and to pitch SEAMLSS for possible adoption by the military community as a tool for modeling and simulating military networks.
 
    Verification/Validation of SEAMLSS
  • In May 1999, NIST together with DARPA conducted the DARPA/NIST Network Simulation Validation Workshop on simulation model validation for large scale networks.  Researchers from the community were brought together for a three day workshop to present results on model validation and for discussing further ideas in break-out sessions. This led to the start of the DARPA Network Modeling and Simulation Program a year later.
  • NIST devised a detailed verification plan (set of verification tests) for SEAMLSS to determine if the implementation of SEAMLSS accurately represented specifications.
  • NIST worked closely with SAIC on the SEAMLSS verification process and provided continuous and timely feedback to SAIC on test results and analysis of verification procedure.  This process detected a good number of errors in SEAMLSS.
    Evaluation of Protocols
  • NIST worked with the US Department of Defense (DoD) service representatives to identify metrics needed for evaluating MANET protocols.  One version of this document is provided here.
 
  • NIST collaborated with DoD service representatives to devise a set of Standard Evaluations to be used in assessing the GloMo and MANET protocols.  An example of a Standard Evaluation is "Network Join" - which consists of a series of test cases to determine how long it takes for a node or a group of nodes to fully integrate into an existing network.
 
MANETs for Emergency Preparedness Telecommunications
 
This project focused on investigating possible use of MANETs to meet specific emergency preparedness requirements.  Examples of emergency networks include the disaster relief efforts after terrorist bombing attacks or in the aftermath of a natural disaster where cellular/PCS service may not be available.  The main focus of the project was on efficient and appropriate use of the bandwidth limited channel in an emergency situation.  Of particular importance was emergency channel access and priority messaging for disaster relief workers and teams.  We investigated several MAC layer protocols for MANETs, such as FAMA and CAMP protocols, and evaluated their ability to provide multiplexing for different priority classes. We looked at:
  • Admission Control -- if a transmission request should be accepted into the network given the class of priority, delay requirements, and available resources of the systems, e.g., bandwidth and buffer space.
  • Scheduling - appropriate traffic offered to the channel from the different priority classes.
 
Dynamic Power-Conscious Routing for MANETs
 
In a MANET, power may be supplied to static nodes through a generator, while mobile nodes operate off a battery supply.  Clearly, a vital issue for MANETs then is to conserve power while still delivering messages reliably since the life of the network is determined by the power sources.  In this project, we focused on the issue of power conservation in routing for MANETs.  Some aspects of the project are listed below:
 
  • We investigated the benefits of power consciousness in making routing decisions at the network layer.
  • We developed an efficient, dynamic, power conscious routing concept for MANETs.
  • We used OPNET to design a simulation test environment by constructing models for network structure, wireless link quality, multiuser interference, and radio communication environment.  We incorporated the IEEE 802.11 MAC layer protocol in our simulation environment and ran various simulations looking at the performance of the power conscious routing concepts.
  • We extended power conscious principles to other distributed routing algorithms.
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Last updated: June 4, 2008
Date Created: May, 2001
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