A Cross-Layer Design for a Multihop, Self-Healing, and Self-Forming Tactical Network

In mission and time critical applications, bandwidth and delay optimizations are the key goals of communication systems. This paper presents a cross-layer framework design that reduces the call setup time, provides collision-free communication, and reuses the empty slots of Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) protocol which otherwise causes low throughput and large delay. As number of communicating nodes in tactical networks is small as compared to commercial mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), classical TDMA will yield huge number of empty slots and any Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) technique may cause more delay in some critical scenarios. Proposed methodology gives a Cross-Layer Architecture for Network (NET) Layer and Medium Access Control (MAC) Layer. Our design provides bandwidth efficient, collision-free communication to Software-Defined Radios (SDRs) in self-forming and self-healing tactical networks with low call setup time and multihop routing. For this purpose TDMA as MAC layer protocol and Ad Hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) as Network Layer Routing Protocol are used. Our slot allocation (SA) algorithm, Cross-Layer TDMA (CL-TDMA), consists of control phase where AODV control packets are exchanged and data transfer phase where transmission of data and voice occurs. All active radios in vicinity gather information about communicating nodes based on the exchange of control packets by SDRs. Our algorithm then uses this information to help all active SDRs find slot(s) that will be used for collision-free transmission. A number of experiments are performed to establish improved performance of the proposed technique compared to other established techniques and protocols.