Performance Analysis of Proactive Neighbor Discovery in a Heterogeneous Tactical Network

This paper describes a quantitative evaluation of OLSRv2 proactive neighbor discovery in a heterogeneous tactical network using real military radios. Tactical networks generally have low data rates, high latency and hard to predict mobility patterns. The experimental network used in this investigation hosted mobile nodes using three different types of communication technologies, namely VHF (9.6 kbps, 20 km), UHF (240 kbps, 2 km) and SatCom (100-500 kbps - simulated). OLSRv2 was set to use multicast IPs to send hello and topology control messages within intervals suitable for the data rate available; using less than ~5% of the network nominal capacity. Therefore, we analyze results from a testbed with mobile nodes connected to a tactical network using OLSRv2 to create an overlay IP network. The quantitative results suggest that OLSRv2 can be fine-tuned to proactively discover IP nodes in radio networks with quite different link data rates. The trade-off between data overhead and time to converge is discussed over estimated metrics.