A survey on real-world implementations of mobile ad-hoc networks

Simulation and emulation are valuable techniques for the evaluation of algorithms and protocols used in mobile ad-hoc networks. However, these techniques always require the simplification of real-world properties such as radio characteristics or node mobility. It has been shown that this may lead to results and conclusions which do not reflect the behavior of ad-hoc networks in the real world. Various prototype implementations demonstrate that even simple protocols such as flooding do not behave as it was predicted by earlier simulation. To overcome this problem, real-world experiments are required. In this paper, we present a survey on existing real-world implementations of mobile ad-hoc networks. We report on the technology used for the implementations as well as on key findings from experiments conducted with these implementations.