Barrage relay networks for cooperative transport in tactical MANETs

Abstract

Barrage relay networks (BRNs) are mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) based on an autonomous cooperative communication scheme that allows any number of radios to cooperate in sending a given message to one or more receivers without the need for coordination. Messages in a BRN propagate outward in spatial waves wherein the simultaneous reception of a single message from multiple sources results in capture rather than collision, obviating the need for traditional collision avoidance mechanisms. The result is a very low-latency, robust broadcast mechanism. In addition to being valuable on its own (e.g., multi-hop push-to-talk voice), the broadcast capability of BRNs can be leveraged to rapidly establish paths for robust multi-hop unicast and multicast transmission, thereby enabling low-state reactive protocol design. The resulting ldquocontrolled barrage regionsrdquo (CBRs) comprise a set of buffer radio nodes that isolate a set of cooperating BRN radios. The effectiveness of BRN for broadcast and unicast is illustrated via simulations.