A framework to use SIP in ad-hoc networks

A rapid increase in wireless communication services has occurred during the last years. Infrastructure-less ad-hoc networks emerge as an interesting option to provide pervasive wireless services, although several challenges must be resolved first. Our paper focuses on issues related to signalling and presence management in mobile wireless ad-hoc networks. We present a framework to use SIP in this kind of networks. The objective of this framework is to allow the users of ad-hoc networks to communicate with each other and exchange instant messages. This framework permits the discovery of participants, the establishment, the publishing and the ending of two-party or multiparty sessions by providing SIP (session initiation protocol) extensions. To cope with the bandwidth limitation problem, it is proposed to unify the network layer routing protocols and the application layer SIP REGISTER methods. Scalability of the framework is improved by introducing a clustering approach that group nodes together into clusters.