Protocolo de roteamento bioinspirado para MANETs baseado em redes de fungos: Hyphanet

Abstract

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) corresponds to a group of mobile devices that communicate with each other and without any supporting infrastructure. The network topology is not structured, the devices are network nodes that act as terminals and routers. MANET routing is extremely challenging due to node mobility and limited bandwidth and power resources. Major trends currently show that MANETs are taking up more and more space in the domestic and corporate market with the growth in the number of users and new applications. As diverse systems have been inspired by the behavior of social insects (ants, bees, among others), fungal colonies also demonstrate the potential of bioinspiration because they exhibit behavior and capacity for selforganization of adaptive, robust, resilient and efficient transport networks of nutrients. Theoretical foundations in the area of fungi were obtained through exploratory research, prioritizing research that deals with the growth and formation of fungal networks, and the processes involved in the production and transport of nutrients, as well as the applications of fungi that already exist in the technological area. In this way, a comparison between a fungal network and a communication network is obtained. Filaments (or hyphae) can be compared to links, their tips and branches are the nodes and the mycelium the entire network. Many species of fungi form filament networks from the germination of spores, which extend into the formation of hyphae networks, whose growth and survival are based on the dynamics of absorption, recycling and transport of nutrients. Based on these concepts, this thesis presents a proposal for the development of a bioinspired routing protocol for MANET networks based on the dynamics of fungal colonies, called HyphaNet. The protocol developed is of the type on-demand and multipath. HyphaNet is promising and performance tests (average delay, transmission and delivery rates and overhead) performed based on the NS-2 simulator, in low traffic scenarios of the CBR / UDP type, present results superior to those of the classic AODV protocol and results similar to the SARA protocol, based on ants.