Perspectives to Ad-hoc Extensions of Cellular Networks

Abstract

With more and more cellular phone handsets being introduced wifi interfaces, an alternative to using the purely cell-based mobile phone networks infrastructure can be envisioned: mobile phone cells can be extended via ad-hoc relaying of traffic from out-of-coverage handsets towards in-coverage handsets, and mobile phones might be able to establish communication paths between them without passing through the cellular infrastructure. This presents a number of challenges including billing, security, multi-fabric routing, hand-over and quality of service. One task of this project is thus to look at the necessity of providing brokering network access, addressing variables influencing its success. The other task for this project is to construct the necessary mechanisms for establishing the ad-hoc part of an extension to cellular networks. This involves analysing ad-hoc networking and implementing OLSRv2, one of several experimental solutions for ad-hoc networking that exist within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). To emulate such a system, but also for debugging and evaluating the implementation, a test-bed is required to be constructed.