Design of the next generation cognitive mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract

Cognition capability has been seen by researchers as the way forward for the design of next generation of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). The reason why a cognitive paradigm would be more suited to a MANET is because MANETs are highly dynamic networks. The topology may change very frequently during the operation of a MANET. Traffic patterns in MANETs can vary from time to time depending on the need of the users. The size of a MANET and node density is also very dynamic and may change without any predictable pattern. In a MANET environment, most of these parameters may change very rapidly and keeping track of them manually would be very difficult. Previous studies have shown that the performance of a certain routing approach in MANETs is dependent on the size of the network and node density. The choice of whether to use a reactive or proactive routing approach comes down to the network size parameter. Static or offline approaches to fine tune a MANET to achieve certain performance goals is hence not very productive as a lot of these parameters keep changing during the course of operation of MANETs. Similarly, the performance of MANETs would improve greatly if the MAC layer entity could operate in a more flexible manner. In this paper we propose a cognitive MANET design that will ensure that all these dynamic parameters are automatically monitored and decisions are based on the current status of these parameters.