Intermittently-Connected Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (ICMANET) are one of the new areas in the field of wireless communication. Networks under this class are potentially deployed in challenged environments using isolated mobile devices with limited resources. They are emerging as a promising technology in applications such as in wildlife management, military surveillance, underwater networks, and vehicular networks. Recent focus on these networks has naturally generated efforts to analytically understand them. In contrast to conventional Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs), links on an end-to-end path in ICMANETs do not exist contemporaneously. This compounds the analysis of such networks. The research provides one of the first steps for performance modeling of ICMANETs. This is very crucial in the design of practical schemes targeted to offer good performance across different mobility scenarios.
Most current analytical research employs simple mobility models such as the Poisson-contact model, which are unrealistic. Departing heavily from this trend, the investigator has developed performance analysis under the very general class of stationary mobility models. This paves the way to analytically understand the effect of mobility parameters on performance. In particular, the research answers questions of the following nature: What parameters of the mobility model affect ICMANETs performance? How does one extract the necessary information? The research objective is to develop novel approaches in performance modeling of ICMANETs, drawing out key ideas from Markov-chain- and queuing- theory. The research attempts to arrive at a novel framework which is capable of capturing key network characteristics under practical constraints such as finite bandwidth, random contact durations, and finite node buffers. Key performance measures such as throughput will be explored for various communication scenarios, routing protocols, network coding and buffer management schemes.
