The research development and application of self and neighbour awareness protocols for emerging network architectures

The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in the number of devices and applications for wireless networks. During this time, wireless networks have undergone a revolution, from fixed-infrastructure networks to mobile ad hoc networks to sensor networks. Not surprisingly, as the network structures have evolved, so have the problems, most notably, bandwidth utilization, power consumption, dynamic reconfiguration, and quality of service. Collectively, these problems add to the complexity of the design and implementation of both connection-oriented and datagram protocols. The objectives of this research are to develop solutions to the problems of bandwidth utilization, power consumption, dynamic reconfiguration, and quality of service in mobile ad hoc and sensor networks through the use of adaptive protocols that allow a node to be both self-aware and neighbour aware. In addition, the research will continue to focus the development of the novel, Cartesian network architecture, as our past experience with this network has lead to the design of an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) router, and several wireless protocols, all of which demonstrate the viability of this type of network design.