NOMAD A Mobile Ad Hoc and Distruption Tolerant Routing Protocol for Tactical Military Networks

There has been a great deal of research in recent years within the general field of mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) with many proposals submitted to the IETF for consideration. Delay or disruption tolerant networking (DTN) is a relatively new field for routing, concerned with networks that experience long transmission delay or periods of disruption. Military forces around the globe have applied one or the other networking paradigm with varying degrees of success to their own problems of mobility at the lower tactical level (brigade and below). The fundamental reason for this limited success is that many of the desired tactical scenarios at this level require a network that is not exclusively ad hoc nor exclusively disrupted, but rather a network that dynamically adapts to a variety of mobility situations ranging from relatively stable, almost enterprise like, to completely disrupted. Clearly, a routing protocol that is capable of seamlessly transitioning between synchronous and asynchronous modes of operation is needed for tactical (and other) networks. This paper will outline such a protocol, called NOMAD - native OLSR for mobile ad hoc and disrupted networks.