LTE higher layer performance with 4-NIRA MANET routing

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET), which is an infrastructure-less communication technique, has been a key research field for many years. Most of the research have been carried out in the IEEE 802.11 environment. Long Term Evolution (LTE) is a mobile cellular access technology which has a different feature set to IEEE 802.11 that makes it a suitable candidate for MANET. An improved MANET technology compatible with LTE's IP based infrastructure has been considered as a key research objective. This paper presents a performance analysis of a MANET routing algorithm called 4-Node Intelligent Routing Algorithm (4-NIRA) over LTE. The algorithm was simulated in an LTE environment and the result highlighted the compatibility with the IP based architecture available in LTE networks. This paper models the communication of a MANET node located inside an LTE cell within the external network using 4-NIRA and three other prominent algorithms. Performance of LTE's higher layer components such as eNodeB, IP Backbone and EPC are analyzed in this paper.