Reliable and dynamic access to services in battlefield ad hoc networks

Survivable access to resources and services in battlefield networks can be provided through name servers (NS) that gather service/resource registrations and resolve the queries from the requesting nodes. Functionally equivalent services can also be pooled so that the queries would be. resolved to multiple entries, accessed as a single logical reliable server pool (RSP). We defined a new RSP architecture called dynamic survivable resource pooling (DSRP) that utilizes a virtual backbone (VB) for ad hoc network as a dynamic structure for hosting NS. A mesh of NS connected by a set of virtual links are used to relay service registrations, requests, and replies. In this paper, we give an overview of the RSP and VB, show how the DSRP is designed based on these two schemes, and outline battlefield applications such as situation awareness, network security, distributed robotics, and QoS in red-black networks.