Evaluation of ad-hoc and mobility architectures using satellite communications

International audienceIn military or emergency scenarios (like Disaster Relief), the area where the terrestrial forces are located is not always easy to cover. In such an area, no infrastructure is available (never deployed or unavailable due to disaster for instance), persons are located in many locations, eventually structured in groups, but distant from one to another. The topology may also introduce difficulties (canyons, mountains, vegetation...). In such scenarios, communications in a group may be done using ad-hoc networks principle, but the communications from one group to another can be compared to the interconnection of ad-hoc networks. We propose in this paper to interconnect these terrestrial ad-hoc networks with a geostationary DVB-RCS system. This satellite network allows us not only to interconnect the groups, but also to provide them with an access to a very far headquarters and also to the Internet, thanks to the bidirectional link supported by these satellite systems. DVB-S/RCS systems, mobility protocols and ad-hoc network protocols are first presented separately. The global architecture is then defined. Each kind of architecture is evaluated alone. Finally, architectures performances are compared to each other and the results are discussed as a conclusion