Push-to-talk applications in mobile ad hoc networks

We have implemented and tested a solution for voice group communication in mobile ad hoc networks. The system reuses the optimized flooding techniques from the OLSR protocol. This minimizes the number of forwarding nodes, and thus also the total network load. Also, the system will function instead of a regular multicast routing protocol. This means that we avoid extra state information and overhead for initialization and maintaining the multicast tree, since we are reusing the regular OLSR protocol's structure. The group communication system is best suited for broadcasted voice traffic in dense mobile ad hoc networks. The system is implemented and tested for a real life test-bed, based upon Linux routers with 802.11b wireless LAN. We present the basic theory and implemented solution in this paper. Also, we present our initial network tests for the implemented solution.