EFFICIENT MULTI-HOP WIRELESS NETWORKING WITH SUBNETWORK RELAY AND IEEE 802.11B TECHNOLOGIES

摘要

In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of an efficient, multi-hop wireless networking scheme by combining two ad hoc networking technologies: IEEE 802.11b and the Subnetwork Relay (SNR) technology, which is a self-forming, self-configuring, masterless, multi-hop, ad hoc IP networking technology available on the market today. The hybrid protocol resulting from the combination of these technologies is highly efficient and could be used to meet existing civilian and military requirements that cannot be fulfilled with current off-the-shelf solutions based on IEEE 802.11. Three approaches to integration of these technologies are presented and evaluated. It is found that the hybrid protocol consisting of the juxtaposition of the SNR and 802.11b protocol stacks, offers an efficiency improvement of more than 20% at 11Mbps over current OLSR/802.11b results. The performance of the hybrid protocol does not degrade as more nodes are added in the network. In its current version, the protocol alleviates the well-known 802.11 hidden node problem and greatly limits the exposed node problem.