An experimental study of basic communication protocols in ad-hoc mobile networks

We investigate basic communication protocols in ad-hoc mobile networks. We follow the semi-compulsory approach according to which a small part of the mobile users, the support Σ, that moves in a predetermined way is used as an intermediate pool for receiving and delivering messages. Under this approach, we present a new semi-compulsory protocol called the runners in which the members of Σ perform concurrent and continuous random walks and exchange any information given to them by senders when they meet. We also conduct a comparative experimental study of the runners protocol with another existing semi-compulsory protocol, called the snake, in which the members of Σ move in a coordinated way and always remain pairwise adjacent. The experimental evaluation has been carried out in a new generic framework that we developed to implement protocols for mobile computing. Our experiments showed that for both protocols only a small support is required for efficient communication, and that the runners protocol outperforms the snake protocol in almost all types of inputs we considered. © Springer-Verlag 2001.