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 ∑, 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 ∑ 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 ∑ 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.