Toward Terminal-to-Terminal Communication Networks: A Hybrid MANET and DTN Approach

To realize ubiquitous wireless network environment, we focus on terminal-to-terminal communication networks in this research. Especially, Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) and Delay-and Disruption-Tolerant Network (DTN) which are considered good candidates for next generation network model. In these networks, the users can transmit their data via other users' terminals (e. g., smart phones, notebooks, etc.) without special network equipment. However, the performance of these networks may decrease depending on the surrounding environment such as user density and mobility. Therefore, we propose a novel method to utilize both these network-technologies efficiently. In our proposed method, each node selects the network mode (i.e., MANET or DTN) according to its own condition and the surrounding environment. Additionally, we propose an efficient technique to combine MANET and DTN in order to avoid wasting the network resources. Moreover, we demonstrate the results of our experiments which are carried out with real smart phones where the proposed method is implemented. Furthermore, some future works to this research are introduced.