Disruption tolerant networking for heterogeneous ad-hoc networks

Abstract

Heterogeneous ad-hoc networks, for both military and scientific applications, may be far removed from communications infrastructure such as the Internet. Yet, to be maximally useful, these networks must ultimately be connected to data storage and analysis facilities. Providing connectivity for such networks may involve exotic and unusual methods of data transfer, including acoustic, free space optical, satellite, and data mule forms of network links. problems of intermittent connectivity due to power scheduling, node failure, and packet losses from unpredictable external factors are frequently encountered. In addition, due to the myriad of assets employed, a high degree of network heterogeneity is encountered. As an approach to dealing with these two major issues, we propose the use of the disruption tolerant networking (DTN) architecture, which provides reliable asynchronous data communication across heterogeneous, failure-prone networks