Long-Range Short-Burst Mobile Mesh Networking: Architecture and Evaluation

Decentralized off-grid short-burst communications for public safety and other applications require mobile wireless networks that can be inexpensively and instantly deployed to cover a large area. Maximizing coverage often necessitates trading bit-rate for range. The resulting capacity is insufficient to support existing mesh networking protocols due to their excessive control overhead, and motivates a fresh approach. We present the networking architecture of goTenna – a long-range lightweight device for mobile mesh networking. Our protocol uses a novel zero-control-packet approach for broadcasting and unicasting that builds state by observing packet header information. We describe its experimental evaluation using ns3, and on a goTenna testbed, concluding with some research challenges.