ARPAM: Ad-hoc Routing Protocol for
Aeronautical Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks
Michael Iordanakis, Dimitrios Yannis, Kimon Karras,
Georgios Bogdos, Georgios Dilintas
Technological Educational Institute of Piraeus
Massimiliano Amirfeiz, Giorgio Colangelo, Stefano Baiotti
Selex Communications
5th International Symposium Communication Systems Networks and Digital Signal Processing
(19-21 July 2006, University of Patras, Greece)
Introduction
 IEEE 802.11
– Development of MANETs
 MANETs and avionics
– The present: Restrictions in avionics
 Connectivity
 Bandwidth
– The future: Free Flight concept
 Motivation & benefits
 Requirements?
Network topology
 Airspace:
– High altitude platforms
(HAPs)
– Airports
– Aircraft
 Aircraft:
– Single omni-directional
antenna
– Several directional
antennas / links
ARPAM
 Motivation for a new routing protocol
– Combination of table-driven & on-demand
operations
– Geographical information
 Solution: ARPAM !
– Based on AODV and TBRPF
– Utilizes geolocalization information available by
external avionics applications
– Parameter optimization based on the
aeronautical environment
On Demand Operations
 When an aircraft
wishes to
communicate with
another aircraft which
cannot be served
from a backbone
node
 When simply there is
a communication
need between two
aircraft.
 Eg: node C  node E
Table Driven Operations
 Time critical applications
require low response
times from the network.
 Table driven protocols
provide a rapid response
when a route is
requested from a node
and the route is
maintained in the routing
table.
 Eg. Node B  node A 
HAP
Route maintenance & evaluation
 MAC layer of the nodes
which make up a
communication path (C-DE) keeps reporting to the
network layer for a specific
amount of time that
connection between nodes
C and D is no longer
available
– will cause C & D to send a
HELLO packet
Route maintenance & evaluation
 The originator waits to
receive a HELLO-ack
packet from the destination
in order to mark the path
as valid
 If, after a period of time,
the node has not yet
received any ACK packet,
it will emit a HELLO
message again
X
Co-operation with existing avionics
systems
 ADS-B
– Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast
concept
– It is currently being deployed worldwide
– Assists the process of neighbor discovery on
behalf of the routing protocol
– Information is utilized by the ARPAM routing
protocol
Simulation - Testbed
 Topology
– 12 nodes
– 1000 X 1000
km squared
– 400-800 km/h
 Application
– VoIP
 Client-Server
Simulation - Results
Routing traffic
transmitted by
Server node
Simulation - Results
Routing traffic
received by
Server node
Conclusions
 ARPAM routing protocol correlation to the
existing avionics technology
 Comparison to the antagonistic routing
protocols
 ARPAM currently exhibits a very stable and
high performance behavior for routing in
aeronautical MANETs.
Future work
 There is still room for improvement
– Our goal is to further develop ARPAM
 Extend the capabilities of the working model
 Extend its internal routing mechanisms for increased
reliability on critical applications and additional
stability
– Provide future simulations which will include
more complex network topologies and
scenarios closer to the future aviation
environment.
Questions