IF-MANET: Interoperable framework for Mobile Ad Hoc networks

Abstract

The rapid improvement in low power micro-processors, wireless networks and embedded systems has boosted the desire to utilize the very significant resources of mobile devices. The mobile ad hoc network (MANET), an infrastructure-less wireless network, is an emerging technology and is best suited to provide communication between wireless mobile devices. Due to the nature of MANET, the network topology changes frequently, unpredictably and has created the new challenges as traditional routing protocols are not suitable for multi-hop communication in mobile ad hoc environments. There are number of routing protocols proposed for MANET, and development is active in this area, however, there is no single routing protocol which is best suited to address all the basic issues of heterogeneous MANETs. This diverse range of routing protocols have created a new challenge as in general the heterogeneous mobile devices cannot communicate with each other and thus are unable to facilitate the full exploitation of mobile resources. To overcome the above mentioned issues, this paper has proposed an Interoperable Framework for MANET, called an IF-MANET, which hides the complexities of heterogeneous routing protocols and provides a homogeneous layer for seamless communication between these routing protocols. The IF-MANET resides in user space and it will be implemented at application layer to provide runtime interoperability and platform independence.