Tutorial: Real-Time Aspects of Mobile Communication Networks

Description

Approved for 3 CompTIA CEUs: A+, Network+

Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) represent key communication infrastructure within tactical networks. The basic requirement for MANETs is to provide a minimum level of connectivity under a wide range of operating conditions. The connectivity must be sustained despite unpredictable and adverse radio propagation conditions, unexpected environmental and technical events including jamming, equipment failures, network overload and varying QoS demands. In addition, the connectivity must support coordinated activities of many distributed sub-systems to enable increasingly autonomous operations, and timely and appropriate responses to events and changes in the environment. For these reasons, information not delivered in time to where it is needed becomes obsoleted and is discarded, thus, wasting network resources. Provisioning of real-time (RT) or near-RT applications in tactical MANETs supports intelligent tactical decisions, and reduces risks.

The aim of this tutorial is to explore how near/RT applications are implemented and executed in MANETs. In such networks, deterministic guarantees for error-free delivery of information packets is equally important as their time-bounded delivery. We will newly describe communication functionality of MANETs using the terminology of RT systems. We will focus on reactive protocols which respond to various unpredictable events as they occur, and also consider proactive protocols which can improve responsiveness of the network to predictable events. We will define optimization problems to schedule computing and transmission resources for multiple near/RT parallel applications with deterministic and/or statistical constraints. We will discuss trade-offs in the performance and timeliness of information delivery in MANETs. We will review concurrency of communication and computing sub-systems in provisioning RT applications over distributed nodes in MANETs, and how the concurrency is affected by scheduling algorithms and varying availability of computing and communication resources. We will also briefly cover other related issues such as stability, race conditions, interruptions, prioritization, finite buffer sizes, and security.

Tracks:

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  Continuing Education
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  Technical Tutorials