MANET management: Industry challenges & potential solutions

Characterized by their flexibility to be deployed in relatively short time spans and ability to function in remote and hostile environments, mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are becoming the basis for on-demand peer-to-peer wireless networking in the commercial and military sectors. However, the power and dynamism of MANETs renders their management a significant challenge. For example, unpredictable link qualities render quality of service assurance to the mission critical/platinum services very challenging. Likewise, lack of fixed infrastructure coupled with intermittent connectivity place a significant burden on network management systems that are expected to provide seamless recovery amidst random network failures. Additionally, the network management operations in MANETs need to be automated to a large extent. This paper discusses the challenges associated with two key MANET aspects of interest to the Industry: (a) providing and maintaining QoS guarantees and (b) fault management and self-healing in MANETs, and discusses potential solutions that can be implemented in practice.