Internet connectivity for mobile Ad Hoc networks

Abstract

Ad hoc networking allows portable devices to establish communication independent of a central infrastructure. However, the fact that there is no central infrastructure and that the devices can move randomly gives rise to various kind of problems, such as routing and security. In this thesis the problem of routing is considered. There are several ad hoc routing protocols, such as AODV, DSR, OLSR and ZRP, that propose solutions for routing within a mobile ad hoc network. However, since there is an interest in communication between not only mobile devices in an ad hoc network, but also between a mobile device in an ad hoc network and a fixed device in a fixed network (e.g. the Internet), the ad hoc routing protocols need to be modified. In this thesis the ad hoc routing protocol AODV is used and modified to examine the interconnection between a mobile adhoc network and the Internet. For this purpose Network Simulator 2, ns2, has been used. Moreover, three proposed approaches for gateway discovery are implemented and investigated. The goal of the thesis project is twofold:
• To modify the source code of AODV in accordance with the Internet draft connectivity for IPv6 Mobile Ad Hoc Networks " which presents a solution where AODV is used to provide Internet access to mobile nodes.
• To implement and compare di®erent approaches for gateway discovery. In this thesis, three di®erent type of gateway discovery have been taken:
• The proactive gateway discovery is initiated by the gateway itself. The gateway periodically broadcasts a gateway advertisement message which is transmitted after expiration of the gateways timer. The time between two consecutive advertisements must be chosen with care so that the network is not °ooded unnecessarily. All mobile devices residing in the gateways transmission range receive the advertisement and update information about gateway. After receiving advertisement, a mobile device just forward it broadcast it again. This process goes on within entire MANET.
• In reactive gateway discovery a mobile device of MANET connects by gateway only when it is needed. For that the mobile device broadcasts request message to the ALL MANET GW MULTICAST address (the IP address for the group of all gateways in a mobile ad hoc network). Thus, only the gateways are addressed by this message and only they process it. Intermediate mobile nodes that receive the message just forward it by broadcasting it again up to gateway.
• To minimize the disadvantages of proactive and reactive gateway discovery, the two approaches can be combined. This results is a hybrid gateway discovery. For mobile devices in a certain range around a gateway, proactive gateway discovery is used. Mobile devices residing outside this range use reactive gateway discovery to obtain information about the gateway. In comparing theses di®erent gateway discovery, three matrices are used. These are packet delivery ratio,average end-to-end delay and overhead. In case of proactive gateway discovery and hybrid gateway discovery, value of packet delivery ratio is larger than reactive gateway discovery. In case of proactive gateway discovery and hybrid gateway discovery, value of end to end delay is less than reactive gateway discovery. The overhead of proactive gateway discovery is greater than other two gateway discovery As for the average end-to-end delay, the proactive and hybrid methods perform slightly better than the reactive method. Concerning the routing overhead, when the advertisement interval is short the reactive method generates much less overhead than the proactive method, which in turn generates much less overhead than the hybrid method.