Demonstration of ad hoc Network Solutions

This applet is designed to demonstrate an innovative approach to maintaining ad hoc networks. See below for instructions.

To get started:

• click the Reset button and enter a modest number (say, 36) in the dialog box. 
• click Start to see the initial locations of each node.
• click Go to launch the node motion and clustering algorithms. The radius is large enough that all the nodes will belong to one sub-network.

As the nodes move, the network path length will grow without bound. To enable active network path optimization,

• Click Active and notice that the recorded path length is reduced and maintained close to the optimal path length.  There is no feasible way to generate and compute the optimal path even for this small number of stations.
• click Add to insert a new station at random into the network.
• click Dl Rnd or Dl Pick to delete either a random node or one that you select with the mouse.

To observe MANET behavior:

• click Radius and enter a reasonable value like 300. After the initial shock of losing communication links, the nodes will create a stable set of sub-networks
• click Details and then select one or more sub-network centroids to highlight the membership of each sub-network.

The display shows the nodes in red with the centroids of individual sub-networks numbered.
The buttons have the following functionality:

• Start: Start the timer that moves the nodes and runs the incremental algorithm.
• Stop: Pause the timer.
• Reset: Specify the initial number of nodes.
• Go: Releases the node motion and data processing algorithms.
• Add: Add a node to the problem.
• Del Rand: Delete a node chosen at random.
• Del Pick: Pick a node to be deleted.
• Active: Turn on the active path manager that attempts to maintain an optimal path as the nodes move.
• Passive: Turn off the active path manager.
• Radius: set the communications radius.
• Details: highlight the nodes of an individual sub-net.