Network Visualization for Directional Routing in Ad-Hoc Networks
Dian Yuan, Doug Pfeil, Kapil R. Dandekar
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Drexel University
Introduction
Results
With a more concentrated energy towards intended receiver,
directional antennas decreases the likelihood that one
transmission will interfere with another. It increases the
utility of the ad-hoc wireless networks compared with the
traditional networks using omnidirectional antennas. Figure
1 shows the difference is radiated power between
omnidirectional antennas and directional antenna. However,
when visualizing these systems, traditional network
visualization tools do not take into account antenna
configuration. A new tool is needed to realize the network
visualization that can incorporate directional antenna
configurations.
Conclusion
● The tool successfully shows all the direct shortest paths for
signal transmissions by calculating the lowest cost routing over
each antenna configuration.
● It also examines the possibility of the successful
connectivity.
● If the signal energy towards the direction of the intended
receiver is lower than the threshold, the connection is ignored.
Figure 3. IP Route show command
◆ A system uses its routing table to determine which network
interface to use when sending packets to remote systems.
◆ To display the routing table, use the IP route show command, as
shown in Figure 3.
Future Work
◆ For the future development, I will enhance the function of
the tool to make it provide the optimal alternative route for
the signal transmission.
◆ The tool will also automatically highlight the optimal
route for a given transmitter and receiver for better
visualization, as shown by another similar visualization tool
in the figure below.
◆ This tool will be modified to be used with the hardware
setup.
Figure 1. Omni-directional antenna and Directional antenna
Methods
Find the shortest
path in the matrix
Locate its
position
Set threshold to check
the connectivity
Figure 5. The ideal figure for the network visualization
Print the results
in the graph
Acknowledgement
Determine the notion of
the antenna configuration
Figure 4. The network connectivity graph
Figure 2. The block diagram of the MATLAB code
◆ Routing tables and antenna configuration information for the
network was gathered from the Netlink Protocol Library Suite
(libnl) in Linux.
◆ The information was then fed into MATLAB for processing.
◆ The MATLAB code was implemented to create a tool to both
visualize the network connectivity graph while including some
notion of the antenna configuration.
● Above is a simulated ad-hoc wireless network with 7 nodes,
which is created by MATLAB.
● The notion of the antenna configuration as well as routing
information in the graph give all the information we need to
visualize the network.
● Some nodes are not directly connected, such as node 1 and node
7. That is because the signal energy from the transmitter to the
intended receiver is lower than the threshold.
This work has been supported by Drexel Wireless Systems
Laboratory and Office of Undergraduate Research.
References
[1] Henrik Lundgren, “Implementation and Real-world
Evaluation of Routing Protocols for Wireless Ad hoc
Networks” , December 2002.
[2] Ubuntu Greek, “IProute2-Networking and Traffic control
tools”, October 2013.
[3] Hrishikesh Gossain, “A CROSS-LAYER APPROACH FOR
DESIGNING DIRECTIONAL
ROUTING PROTOCOL IN MANETS”, OBR Center for
Distributed and Mobile Computing