Research Topics in MANETs

Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) provide a vast playground for computer network researchers. Problems posed by dynamic topologies, battery lifetime, disconnected operations, and security are some of the challenges that MANETs present. At this point in time, researchers can only speculate about wide spread future use, with solutions to anticipated problems.

Palanivel Kodeswaran will discuss a paper on cooperative caching in MANETs. Consistency of Cooperative Caching in Mobile Peer-to-Peer Systems over MANET details a proposed approach called Relay Peer-based Caching Consistency (RPCC) for reducing communication overhead and query latency. The approach adaptively deals with differing cache consistency requirements. Simulation results show a performance increase over traditional push and pull based strategies.

Jim Parker will present an overview of research for intrusion detection in MANETs. Due to the dynamic nature of MANETs, nodes are given the responsibility of routing traffic within the network. Malicious nodes have ample opportunity to modify, mis-route, or drop packets, along with various other network abuses. Intrusion detection attempts to locate malicious nodes, but becomes difficult due to mobility, and environmental characteristics of wireless networks. Research presented includes detection methods as well as new work applying to battlefield MANETs.