SBIR-STTR Award

A clean-slate approach is needed for the design and implementation of wireless networks that self organize and can scale with the number of users, devices, and information objects and services that network users wish to share. This project will develop a new architecture and protocols for wireless networks in which naming, addressing, routing, and channel access are redefined to take into account: (a) the multihop nature of channel access over wireless links, (b) the inherent interoperation between transmission scheduling and routing, (c) the dynamic nature of wireless networks, and (d) the need to transport multimedia traffic over such networks.

Benefit:
This project can transform the way routing and channel access protocols and mechanisms are approached for mobile wireless networks in the future, enable the development of autonomic wireless networks that are scale-free, and expedite the deployment and evolution of multihop wireless ad hoc networks in the DoD.

Keywords:
Medium Access Control, Medium Access Control, scale-free routing, Protocols, autonomic transmission scheduling, distributed algorithms, Ad hoc networks, channel access, dynamic topologies, service virtualization, in-network storage

This project focuses on the design and analysis of a scale-free routing approach for mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) that we call automatic incremental routing (AIR), because routing to any destination is automatic from the routing labels assigned to nodes, and incremental in that each node only needs to know information about its immediate neighborhood and nothing else. The main premise for AIR is that routing in wireless ad hoc networks is inherently limited as a result of adopting fixed node names as the identifiers used in channel access and routing, using layer independence to simplify protocol design, and designing a MAC protocol with respect to its operation over a single multiple access link.

Benefit:
The commercial potential of this technology lies in the fact that it dramatically increases the range and capacity of the 802.11 wireless routers while providing unprecedented scalability. Using this technology, we can increase the range of 802.11 modems to unprecedented levels by allowing nodes to transmit their packets to the base station using multi-hop communication. A major advantage of this technology is that it requires minimum storage overhead allowing implementation of this routing protocol into small devices with minimal hardware and memory capability. Furthermore, unlike all commercial offerings, our product will require minimum system configuration effort by system administrators.

Keywords:
scalable routing, Scale-free networking, Secure naming and addressing