Sponsor:

National Science Foundation

Research Team:

Timothy Matis

Universities Involved:

Texas Tech University

Start Date:

01/01/08

End Date:

12/31/08

Summary:

A MANET is a multihop wireless network in which mobile nodes communicate without the support of existing infrastructure. In this network, each node has the capability of being a source, a destination, or an intermediate hop node through which messages are relayed. Though numerous protocols for this communication network have been developed, most suffer in performance in regards to network scalability and partitioning measures, both of which are common in emergency situations as individuals often move in clustered groups and the number of individuals can grow rapidly. Notwithstanding, MANETs are the logical choice in such situations due to their ability to dynamically self-configure. As noted by Drugan et al., ”Efficient collaboration between rescue personnel from various organizations is a mission critical key element for a successful operation in emergency and rescue situations. There are two central preconditions for efficient collaboration, (1) the incentive to collaborate, which is naturally given for rescue personnel, and (2) the ability to efficiently communicate and share information. Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) have the potential to provide a best effort network infrastructure for information sharing in such scenarios.”