Gateway Placement in Hybrid MANET-Satellite Networks

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are self-organized and dynamically reconfigurable wireless networks. It is a promising technology for emergency scenarios where communication systems should be able to operate in potentially adverse environments. However, MANETs experience severe impairments because of node motion or scarce node density yielding network partitioning. Satellite communications may help in this respect by setting up recovery links. In this article, we study the problem of selecting for each network partition a MANET node called gateway that will provide access to the satellite capacity. A key challenge is that nodes are mobile resulting in frequent topology changes. We address this challenge by re-using the mechanisms of clustering techniques initially designed to solve scalability issues in MANETs.