On How to Circumvent the Manet Scalability Curse

An approach is offered to resolve the fundamental non-scalability of peer-to-peer, MANET networks by introducing ultra-broadband (up to and beyond 1 Gb/s), hybrid (FSO/RF) directional backbone nodes that significantly increase the end-to-end throughput of lower tier nodes. This approach represents a very different thrust from those which attempt to circumvent the limitations of low data rate (up to 54Mb/s) and short distance (hundreds of feet) MANET nodes by software fixes such as power control, MIMO, and clever modulation schemes, which are at best stop-gap measures. Our two-tiered approach is scalable based on its combination of MANET clusters interconnected with very broadband directional connections. The MANET clusters are operated within the scalability limits set by scalability density pattern and the base-station oriented directional connections use very narrow beams to provide massive spatial re-use