ActComm Project
http://actcomm.dartmouth.edu
Wireless Agents
Good for military, civil emergencies
Short range wireless platform
proves shorter range produces less contention
and more bandwidth than longer range.
Laptop - 200 Mhz Pent. II
Lucent 802.11 cards, 2 Mb/s - 150-300 meter range
Motorola??
Use GPS to broadcast positions overlayed on map
AD-HOC ROUTING
No base stations,
changing random distribution of short range repeaters
APRIL - standard routing algorithm
unique beacons broadcast identity and routing table
network traffic proportional to
speed of moving nodes
smaller ranges increases traffic
initial paths used until break
GPSR (Karp and Kung)
uses GPS reporting to look up service (LUS)
route to closest neighbor to target
or around edge of "void" based on
void probe packets used to build lists
Incomplete search - may miss routes
Does not take into account delays
No real robust lookup service
Need hierarchical GPSR & LUS
Would reduce traffic and make any machine a LUS
STARA (Gupta and Kumar)
Takes into account delays (due to congestion)
Must explore network using random search
Too frequently changing network will not work
Not yet tested ??
Hybrid Algorithms
GPSR to route between platoons and APRIL
or STARA within platoons, based upon
speeds of soldier movements
Active Messaging
Problems of how much to broadcast and cache in
different situations. Exploring combinations
of four routing strategies that allow for
inevitable disconnections and later retransmissions
Intelligent Messaging Agents
Mobile agents - self-directed migrating processes
Can operate without continuous interaction with user
Don't want to assume pre-installed code
Transmits code along with other communications
Ex. Send pictures along with picture browsing code
Futures
better network sensing and priction,
router placement - take into account varying
power, directional antennas - adapt behavior
based on previous failures, discover failures,
even predict impending disconnections and take
appropriate actions.
Throwing "router grenades" or
"router micro-aircraft" - see BBN
Market-based resouce planning with agents,
even using money, or psuedo-money.