S.

UPENDRA
III B.Tech.
C.S.E, GMRIT
E-mail id: [email protected]
 MOBILE COMPUTING

The term Mobile Computing emphasizes the basic feature of mobility which refers to
a person or a device that moves between different geographical locations or different networks or
different communication devices or in different applications. So mobile computing is a process that
deals with the way of communication by using a Mobile Computer.
The communication in a Mobile Computer can be done by using different Networks
which includes various protocols for different issues. A protocol is necessary for transferring the
information from one node to other through wireless medium. So different protocols are used for
different purposes and according to the type of Network connection.
This paper mainly concerned with the popular Mobile Network called the MANET
(Mobile Ad Hoc Network) and its design issues and operations. It also includes the routing concept
and the different routing protocols that are used in MANETs. Since it is the most powerful Network
used in military applications researches were going on to improve manageability, security, and
availability of communication through this type of technology.
 MOBILE COMPUTING

INTRODUCTION TO MOBILE COMPUTING:

Mobility: Mobility means a person / device that moves between different geographical locations or
different networks or different communication devices or in different applications.
Mobile Computer Definition: A Portable Computer, which retains its Network Connection (wireless
interface) even on move is called mobile computer.
LIMITATIONS OF MOBILE COMPUTER:
• Short battery lifetime (max ~ 5 hours)
• Subject to theft and destruction => unreliable
• Highly unavailable (normally powered-off to conserve battery)
• Limited capability (display, memory, input devices, and disk space)
• Lack of de-facto general architecture: hand-helds, communicators, laptops, and other devices

SOME MOBILE COMPUTING ISSUES:

• Location Management
• Resource Limitations
• Disconnection Management
• Energy Saving
MOBILE COMPUTING APPLICATION:
• Objects and events can be thought of as the building blocks of mobile computing applications
• Set of interoperable objects at different mobile hosts
• Object collaborate via message passing among themselves
• On the occurrence of events, objects take corresponding actions (event-action paradigm)
MOBILE COMPUTING APPLICATION CHARACTERISTICS:
 Migration
 Inheritance
 Hoarding
 Cloning
 Sharing
 Synchronization
Migration: -Hand-off during migration of a host from one cell to other may create disconnection and
duration of such disconnection could be unpredictable. Hence, an application must have some
contingency plan to deal with such unwanted incidents
Inheritance: -A new task created by an application may have to inherit some properties of the host
device. Since properties of all mobile hosts are not same, the inherited properties of a task may differ at
different devices. So, applications must be able to adapt themselves according to the environment and
must have the capabilities to inherit the properties of computing ambients.
Hoarding: -In order to continue computation in disconnected mode, applications may need to hoard
some file/information from databases of fixed network/MSS) in local memory prior to disconnection.
Changes made to files during disconnection period have to be consolidated with the databases after
reconnection
1Cloning: -Task/Process/Object cloning and migration across different hosts and/or MSSs may take
place in the environment. This requires that applications must be able to save the state of task prior to
migration and to create a new task with a predetermined state.
Sharing and Synchronization: -When more than one mobile host want to share information/data
present at fixed network, applications must be aware of the need for read/ write synchronization with
other mobile users. Also, when there is an update to shared data, there has to be some mechanism to
inform all potential users about the update
TYPES OF MOBILE NETWORKS:
There are mainly two types of mobile networks.
• Conventional(With infrastructure)
• Ad hoc networks(MANETs)
(Without any infrastructure)
Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs): - A MANET (Mobile Ad Hoc Network) is an autonomous
collection of mobile users that communicate over relatively bandwidth constrained wireless links. It is
a network architecture that can be rapidly deployed without relying on pre-existing fixed network
infrastructure. The nodes in a MANET can dynamically join and leave the network, frequently, often
without warning, and possibly without disruption to other nodes communication
 Groups of nodes that have a common goal can create formations (clusters) and migrate
together, similarly to military units on missions or to guided tours on excursions. Examples of network
nodes are pedestrians, soldiers, or unmanned robots. Examples of mobile platforms on which the
network nodes might reside are cars, trucks, buses, tanks, trains, planes, helicopters or ships.
MANETs are distinguished from other ad-hoc networks by rapidly changing network
topologies, influenced by the network size and node mobility. Such networks typically have a large
span and contain hundreds to thousands of nodes. The MANET nodes exist on top of diverse platforms
that exhibit quite different mobility patterns. Within a MANET, there can be significant variations in
nodal speed (from stationary nodes to high-speed aircraft), direction of movement,
acceleration/deceleration or restrictions on paths (e.g., a car must drive on a road, but a tank does not).

IP ADDRESS ALLOCATION ISSUES IN MANETS:

• A new node joining a MANET has to acquire an IP address it can use for communication with
other nodes.
• When it leaves the MANET gracefully, it relinquishes the address.
• If a node crashes or leaves the MANET without relinquishing the address, the address has to be
reclaimed.
ROUTING CONCEPT: A MANET is a peer-to-peer network that allows direct communication
between any two nodes, when adequate radio propagation conditions exist between these two nodes
and subject to transmission power limitations of the nodes. If there is no direct link between the source
and the destination nodes, multi-hop routing is used. In multi-hop routing, a packet is forwarded from
one node to another, until it reaches the destination. Of course, appropriate routing protocols are
necessary to discover routes between the source and the destination, or even to determine the presence
or absence of a path to the destination node. Because of the lack of central elements, distributed
protocols have to be used.
DESIGNING ISSUES AND OPERATIONS: The main challenges in the design and operation of the
MANETs, compared to more traditional wireless networks, stem from the lack of a centralized entity,
the potential for rapid node movement, and the fact that all communication is carried over the wireless
medium. In standard cellular wireless networks, there are a number of centralized entities (e.g., the
base stations, the Mobile Switching Centers (MSCs), the Home Location Register (HLR), and the
Visitor Location Register (VLR)). The centralized entities in the cellular networks perform the
function of coordination. The lack of these entities in the MANETs requires distributed algorithms to
perform these functions.
DRAWBACKS IN MANETS:
 All communications between all network entities in ad-hoc networks are carried over the
wireless medium. Additionally, as the wireless bandwidth is limited, its use should be
minimized.
 The transmission radius of each mobile is limited, and channels assigned to mobiles are
typically spatially reused.Consequently, since the transmission radius is much smaller than
the network span, communication between two nodes often needs to be relayed through
intermediate nodes; i.e., multi-hop routing is used.
 Frequent network reconfiguration may trigger frequent exchanges of control information to
reflect the current state of the network. Thus, the bandwidth used for distribution of the
routing update information is wasted.
 In spite of these attributes, the design of the MANETs still needs to allow for a high degree
of reliability, survivability, availability, and manageability of the network.
ROUTING PROTOCOLS FOR AD HOC NETWORKS:
The network routing protocols could be divided into
 Proactive protocols and
 Reactive protocols.
Proactive protocols: These are continuously learning the topology of the network by exchanging
topological information among the network nodes. Thus, when there is a need for a route to a
destination, such route information is available immediately. The early protocols that were proposed
for routing in ad hoc networks were proactive Distance Vector protocols based on the Distributed
Bellman-Ford (DBF) algorithm.
PROBLEMS IN THE DBF ALGORITHM:
• convergence and
• excessive control traffic,
These are especially issues in resource-poor ad hoc networks.
Addressing the problems: An approach taken to address the convergence problem is the application
of the Link State protocols to the ad hoc environment. An example of the latter is the Optimized Link
State Routing protocol (OLSR).
Another approach taken by some researchers is the proactive Path finding
algorithms. In this approach, which combines the features of the Distance Vector and Link State
approaches, every node in the network constructs a Minimum Spanning Tree (MST), using the
information of the MSTs of its neighbors, together with the cost of the link to its neighbors. The Path
Finding algorithms allow reducing the amount of control traffic, to reduce the possibility of temporary
routing loops, and to avoid the "counting to-infinity" problem. An example of this type of routing
protocols is the Wireless Routing Protocol (WRP).
APPLICATION OF PROACTIVE PROTOCOL:
The main issue with the application of proactive protocols to the ad hoc networking environment stems
from the fact, that as the topology continuously changes, the cost of updating the topological
information may be prohibitively high. Moreover, if the network activity is low, the information about
the actual topology is may even not be used and the investment of limited transmission and computing
resources in maintaining the topology is lost.
Reactive routing protocols: These are based on some type of "query-reply" dialog. Reactive
protocols do not attempt to continuously maintain the up-to-date topology of the network. Rather,
when the need arises, a reactive protocol invokes a procedure to find a route to the destination; such a
procedure involves some sort of flooding the network with the route query. As such, such protocols are
often also referred to as on demand.
Examples: The Temporally Ordered Routing Algorithm (TORA), the Dynamic Source Routing
(DSR), and Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV).
• In TORA, the route replies use controlled flooding to distribute the routing information through
a form of a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG), which is rooted at the destination.
• The DSR and the AODV protocols, on the other hand, use unicast to route the reply back to the
source of the routing query, along the reverse path of the query packet.

SINGLE-SCOPE ROUTING PROTOCOLS:

Reactive/On-Demand Routing Protocols:
• Ad Hoc on-Demand Distance Vector Routing (AODV).
• Dynamic Source Routing (DSR).
1. Ad Hoc on-Demand Distance Vector Routing (AODV): This incorporates the destination
sequence number technique of Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector Routing (DSDV) routing into
an on-demand protocol.
In DSDV technique each node keeps a next-hop routing table containing the destinations
to which it currently has a route. A route expires if it is not used or reactivated for a threshold amount
of time. If a source has no route to a destination, it broadcasts a route request (RREQ) packet using an
expanding ring search procedure, starting from a small Time-To-Live value (maximum hop count) for
the RREQ, and increasing it if the destination is not found. The RREQ contains the last seen sequence
number of the destination, as well as the source node's current sequence number. Any node that
receives the RREQ updates its next-hop table entries with respect to the source node. A node that has a
route to the destination with a higher sequence number than the one specified in the RREQ unicasts a
route reply (RREP) packet back to the source. Upon receiving the RREP packet, each intermediate
node along the RREP routes updates its next-hop table entries with respect to the destination node,
dropping the redundant RREP packets and those RREP packets with a lower destination sequence
number than one previously seen. When an intermediate node discovers a broken link in an active
route, it broadcasts a route error (RERR) packet to its neighbors, which in turn propagate the RERR
packet up-stream towards all nodes that have an active route using the broken link. The affected source
can then re-initiate route discovery if the route is still needed.
Multicast Operation of Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing Protocol: This is an
extension of AODV to support multicasting and it builds multicast trees on demand to connect group
members. Route discovery in MAODV [Roy99b] follows a route request/route reply discovery cycle.
As nodes join the group, a multicast tree composed of group members is created. Multicast group
membership is dynamic and group members are routers in the multicast tree. Link breakage is repaired
by downstream node broadcasting a route request message. The control of a multicast tree is
distributed so there is no single point of failure. One big advantage claimed is that since AODV offers
both unicast and multicast communication, route information when searching for a multicast route can
also increase unicast routing knowledge and vice-versa.
In [Roy99b], an ad-hoc network consists of laptops in a room (50-100m width, 10m range)talking to
each other, moving at 1 m/s. The results presented only verify working of AODV and do not compare
performance with other multicasting protocols. They show that AODV attains a high good put ratio
and is able to offer this communication with a minimum of control packet overhead. They also
demonstrate its operation under frequent network partitions.
2. Dynamic Source Routing (DSR):
DSR is a source routing on-demand protocol with various efficiency improvements. In DSR, each node
keeps a route cache that contains full paths to known destinations. If a source has no route to a
destination, it broadcasts a route request packet to its neighbors. Any node receiving the route request
packet and without a route to the destination appends its own ID to the packet and re-broadcasts the
packet. If a node receiving the route request packet has a route to the destination, the node replies to
the source with a concatenation of the path from the source to itself and the path from itself to the
destination. If the node already has a route to the source, the route reply packet will be sent over that
route. Otherwise, depending on the underlining assumption of the directionality of links, the route
reply packet can be sent over the reversed source-to-node path, or piggy-backed in the node's route
request packet for the source.
Advantages of Single-Scope Routing Protocols:
 • Less complexity.
• Easy to implement, both in simulations and in practical systems (ex: - IETF MANET).
• Battery power and wireless bandwidth can be conservatively utilized.
• No routing delay or query traffic.
Disadvantages of Single-Scope Routing Protocols:
• Therefore, the single scope routing protocols may not scale well as the network size increases.
• Routing delay is there.
• unnecessary control traffic

MULTI-SCOPE ROUTING PROTOCOLS:

Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR): It is a link-state protocol where the link information is
disseminated through an efficient flooding technique. The key concept in OLSR is multipoint relay
(MPR). A node's MPR set is a subset of its neighbors whose combined radio range covers all nodes
two hops away. Heuristics are proposed for each node to determine its minimum MPR set based on its
two-hop topology. Each node obtains the two-hop topology through its neighbors' periodic
broadcasting of HELLO packets containing the neighbors' lists of neighbors. As with a conventional
link-state protocol, a node's link information update is propagated through out the network.
However, in OLSR, when a node forwards a link updating packet, only those neighbors in the node's
MPR set participate in forwarding the packet (similar to ZRP's border-casting with 1-hop zone radius).
Furthermore, a node only originates link updates concerning those links between itself and the nodes in
its MPR set. Therefore, routes are computed using a node's partial view of the network topology.
Advantages of Multi-Scope Routing Protocols:
• Scalability.
• Control traffic is reduced.
Disadvantages of Multi-Scope Routing Protocols:
• Difficult to implement.
• More complexity compared to single scope.

SECURITY SCHEMES FOR AD-HOC NETWORKS:

Efforts to incorporate security measures in the ad hoc networking environment have mostly
concentrated on the aspect of data forwarding, disregarding the aspect of topology discovery. On the
other hand, solutions that target route discovery have been based on approaches for fixed-infrastructure
networks, defying the particular MANET challenges. For the problem of secure data forwarding, two
mechanisms that
 (i) detect misbehaving nodes and report such events and
(ii) Maintain a set of metrics reflecting the past behaviors of other nodes have been proposed to
alleviate the detrimental effects of packet dropping.
Each node may choose the ‘best’ route, comprised of relatively well-behaved nodes.

USES OF THE MANETs ARE:

• Tactical operation - for fast establishment of military communication during the deployment
of forces in unknown and hostile terrain.
• Rescue missions - for communication in areas without adequate wireless coverage.
• National security - for communication in times of national crisis, where the existing
communication infrastructure is non-operational due to a natural disaster or a global war.
• Law enforcement - for fast establishment of communication infrastructure during law
enforcement operations;
• Commercial use - for setting up communication in exhibitions, conferences, or sales
resentations;
• Education - for operation of wall-free (virtual) classrooms; and
• Sensor networks - for communication between intelligent sensors (e.g., MEMS2) mounted on
mobile platforms.
SOME CONCLUSIONS:
The interesting fact is that although the military has been experimenting and even using this
technology for the last three decades, the research community has been coping with the rather
frustrating task of finding a "killer" non-military application for ad hoc networks.
A major challenge that has been perceived as a possible "show stopper" for technology transfer is the
fact that commercial applications do not necessarily conform to the” collaborative" environment that
the military communication environment does.
Other challenges in deployment of ad hoc networks relate to the issues of manageability, security, and
availability of communication through this type of technology. Future extensions of the cellular
infrastructure could be carried out using this type of technology and may, very well, be the basis for
fourth generation (4G) of wireless systems. Other possible applications include sensing systems (also
referred to as Sensor Networks) or augmentation to the wireless LAN technology.
References: -
1. www.ece.cornell.edu
2. Ad Hoc Networking, C.E. Perkins, editor, Addison-Wesley Longman, 2001.
3. www.ietf.org
4. A. Ballardie, "Core Based Trees (CBT Version 2) Multicast Routing - Protocol Specification”.