Experiences deploying an ad-hoc network in an urban environment.

Abstract

Studies of mobile ad-hoc networks are in the most part restricted to simulations and theory. They have, to this point, rarely ventured into the real world on a large enough scale to make significant statements about their behavior or performance. The lack of evaluations is largely due to the practicable implications of deploying and evaluating such networks in a real environment. In order to analyse the problems we have built a Wireless Ad-hoc Network for Dublin (WAND). The network provides a large-scale testbed for applications and protocols for mobile ad-hoc networks. It offers the opportunity to explore the behavior and performance of a variety of routing protocols in a reallife environment and an ideal platform for investigating the use of mobile applications in an urban environment. In this paper we present WAND and the experiences gained in building such a network.