FRED - An Application for a Real-Life Large Scale Multihop Ad Hoc Network

Simulations were standard in the Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) research community in the past. New protocols and algorithms were validated via simulations by network simulators such as ns2 or GloMoSim. However, even with the increasing number of published simulation papers, contradictory results are decreasing the confidence in simulations today. First experimental results show that simulation models for Ad Hoc networks are far from being realistic and protocols developed in simulations failed in real word environments. As a result, the demand for experimental results and application deployments within the research community increases. In this paper, we introduce FRED as a suitable application to conduct protocol evaluations as well as user acceptance surveys. FRED (Flexible Radio Enabled Dialog) is an enhanced TED-System that allows asynchronous surveys or quizzes with a multi hop radio network, where individual participants conduct the survey independent of others. FRED is based on the pacemate sensor network platform that provides a comfortable lightweight housing, a simple radio interface and an intuitive GUI that allows long term evaluations of user acceptance and network protocols.