Communications among mobile, tactical nodes presents
a major military challenge. The use of MANET (Mobile
Ad Hoc Network) protocols provides a possible solution
for military nodes, including those in an airborne
network. However MANET research has primarily
focused on ground-based studies, using vehicular speeds
and in many cases random mobility patterns. Nodes of
an airborne network travel at speeds significantly faster
than ground vehicles, and fly in coordinated paths not
modeled by random mobility. In addition, the quality of
the radio links for airborne nodes varies with time, due
to interference, range, or antenna occlusion when
banking. These characteristics make it impossible to
extrapolate existing MANET research results to the
airborne network. In this paper we present a simulation
evaluation of MANET protocol performance for an
airborne environment, with the intent to identify a
routing protocol that can best deal with the dynamics of
an airborne network.
A scenario involving widebody aircraft trajectories was
modeled in OPNET. Intermittent link outages due to
aircraft banking were modeled by use of a notional
radio link, antenna model, and modified OPNET source
code that reflects positional antenna gain, including
antenna occlusion when an aircraft banks. Within this
scenario environment, four MANET protocols (AODV,
TORA, OLSR, OSPFv3-MANET) were run on the
airborne nodes with metric collection of protocol
overhead, packet delivery ratio, and packet delay.
Simulation results and analysis of the protocol
performance for an airborne network are presented
here. Additional issues and future areas of research are
also identified.
