A reliable peer-to-peer protocol for mobile Ad-Hoc wireless networks

Abstract

Reliable, fast, and power aware communication is needed for Ad-Hoc wireless networks. Current techniques based on client-server and Publish/Subscribe communication models are not suitable in multi-robot systems and generally for mobile applications. For this we propose a reliable peer-to-peer protocol based on a UDP Broadcast and Token Passing (UBTP). The protocol is implemented on a WLAN using the Stargate embedded system. For this, a customized UDP protocol with an imperative Poll-based communication is proposed. The protocol is implemented using (1) a communication thread (TC) and (2) a processing thread (TP). A test bed system which allows modules to run TC and TP, in addition to the generation of broadcast request is presented. We used symmetric code in each node. Evaluation reports the distribution of auction completion times for peer-to-peer operations. The evaluation reveals: (1) response times are comparable to UBTP operated at head node, (2) improved degree of reliability as at most 2 steps are sufficient for auctioning seven nodes, (3) proved fairness, and (4) comparable power consumption to simple UBTP.