International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) volume 7 number 1 Jan 2014

ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page11

Maximizing Network Capacity in MANETs through Cooperative
Communications
P.Phani Kumar
1
, P.Anil Kumar
2

1
(Department of CSE, Malla Reddy College of Engineering & Technology/ JNTU Hyderabad, India)
2
(Department of CSE, Malla Reddy College of Engineering & Technology/ JNTU Hyderabad, India)

Abstract --Mobile Ad Hoc Networks are for many
practical scenarios in the real world as it does not
need any pre-established infrastructure. Nodes in the
MANET are resource constrained. Communications
over network consume energy resources of the
network gradually. Therefore it is essential to have
mechanisms that consume fewer resources over
network. Cooperative communication is the strategy
that can improve the life of MANET as it can save
resources of the network. Many existing techniques
that focused on cooperative communications gave
importance to the issues related to link level physical
layer. They mostly ignored the problems pertaining
to upper layer like topology control, routing and
network capacity. To overcome this problem, recently
GUAN et al. came up with a scheme that ensures
cooperative communications by controlling topology
of the network. In this paper we implement that
scheme practically using a prototype application that
simulates the proof of concept. The empirical results
revealed that in upper layer topology control can
improve network capacity of MANET.
Index Terms Mobile Ad Hoc Network,
cooperative communications, physical layer,
topology control

I. INTRODUCTION
Mobile devices are increasingly participating in
communication network due to their increased power
and bandwidth. More over the mobile users are
expecting sufficient speed in the networks. There are
many challenges thrown by wireless media. Besides
having limited resources, the mobile networks are
vulnerable to various kinds of attacks as there is
mobility in the network that causes the nodes to
connect and disconnect from networks. In this
context, cooperative wireless communications have
become very useful strategies in order to improve
energy efficient communications in MANET. These
strategies also support multiple antennas [1]. The
mobile channel is of broadcast nature whose feature
is exploited for cooperative communications in
MANETs. With a single physical antenna, multiple
virtual antennas can be used in order to improve
performance. This kind of support is with IEEE
802.16j [2]. The prior works focused on the issues
present in the physical layer such as outage
probability and outage capacity [3], [4]. Moreover
they ignored problems related to upper layer like
topology control, routing and network capacity.
Many wireless networks operate on point to point
non-cooperative nature of the network. Though they
are complex the technologies make them flexible and
useful when compared with traditional techniques.
The problems in the MANET such as collision
resolution, and routing are resolved using cooperative
communications [5]. For in-depth investigation of the
problem, it is imperative to consider the topology
control of MANET in order to increase network
capacity. As MANETs have no centralized control,
they need cooperation among the nodes for energy
efficient communication. The nodes play many roles
in the network such as topology organization,
neighbor discovery, and topology reorganization.
Choosing neighbors is possible in network with
topology control which results in reduced energy
usage and the increased throughput [6].

Recent research in topology control in MANET is
done by Guan et al. [7] where the author controls
topology using cooperative communications strategy.
Their study revealed that the cooperative
communications in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks can
have its impact on the network capacity of the
MANET the remainder of this paper is organized as
follows. Section II provides details of proposed work
that focuses on the network capacity improvement in
MANETs. Section III presents the prototype
application. Section IV presents experimental results
while section V concludes the paper.

II. PROPSOED APPROACH FOR
NETWORK CAPACITY
IMPROVEMENT
In this section we provide information about our
approach used to improve the network capacity in
MANETs. The focus is on topology control using
International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) volume 7 number 1 Jan 2014

ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page12

cooperative communications in MANETs those
results in increasing the network capacity.

Cooperative Communications
Cooperative communications is the strategy used in
MANET where the nodes cooperate each other in
order to complete communication among the nodes.
For this every node will act as a router who can
forward data to other nodes. This will improve
quality of communications resulting in network
capacity. Here we generalize relay communications.
When the strategy of cooperative communication is
used, it results in reduced energy consumption, and
improved quality in data transmission. The types of
protocols that are used in MANET are shown in
Figure 1.

Fig. 1 Three types of communications (excerpt
from [7])
As shown in Figure 1, it is evident that there are three
types of protocols that can be used in MANET for
efficient communications. The one denoted as (a)
reflects direct communication by making use of
conventional link in point to point fashion. The
second one which is denoted by (b) works in two-hop
fashion using two time-slots. The third one is denoted
by (c) that supports cooperative communications and
occupies two side by side slots. To decode the
content, at the designation, the symbols are
combined.

Topology Control
The physical arrangement of nodes in the network is
called topology in MANET. However, the position of
nodes in MANET is not static. The nodes have
mobility and the network topology changes. As the
topology changes from time to time, this feature has
to be exploited in order to bring about improvements
in throughput and energy consumption. It is possible
to increase network capacity by controlling topology.
The process of deploying links dynamically in order
to improve the energy consumption, throughput and
network capacity is known as topology control.

Network Capacity of MANETs
Network capacity in MANET is the ability of
network that can deliver information. Earlier
problems related to network capacity were explored
by Gupta and Kumar [8]. These researchers
introduced two kinds of capacities of network. They
are known as throughput capacity and transport
capacity. The former relays on channels information
capacity while the latter considers distance and
resembles one-hop capacity.

Network Capacity Improvement
Topology control can help in improving network
capacity in MANETs. This is achieved by
implementing cooperative communications. The
network capacity is set as an objective function that
can be represented as follows.

G* = arg max f(G),
s.t.network connectivity
There is network topology denoted by that is
formed using multiple links and nodes in the
network. With respect to objective function, the
topology is constructed in order to excel in energy
consumption and improving network capacity. The
construction of topology is done as follows.

In order to derive network capacity, interference and
network capacity are considered. When data is
transmitted between the sender and receiver, it is
possible to calculate outage link capacity provided
the outage probability. In this context it is possible to
use two-hop transmission for achieving multi-hop
transmission. For achieving this, two time-slots are
consumed. For transmitting messages from source to
relay node, the first time slot is used while the second
one is used to ensure that messages correctly reach
the destination. In each hop the recording of
interference is done as messages are transmitted over
network. As simultaneous communication is not
possible, usage of two time slots are to be considered
with end to end interference. At each transmission,
the outage of transmission is computed and finally
International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) volume 7 number 1 Jan 2014

ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page13

the outage of two-hop transmission is computed.
Interference occurs in every hop and there needs to
be two time slots to have effective communication
successfully.
For the purpose of cooperative transmission of data
in MANET, selection of proactive best relay is used.
Decode and forward scheme is used to have
communication between the source and destination
nodes. The source node uses first slot in order to send
messages to destination node. While receiving data,
the receiver decodes it and then re-encodes when data
is being forwarded to destination. At destination there
is decoding of signals of source. Then the
computation of outage capacity and probability take
place [3]. In the broadcast period, successful
transmission of data is made using neighbors
involved in cooperative communication. Using link
capacity and interference models, the network
capacity can be derived [9]. Thus the value that has
been derived can be used as an objective function that
focuses on controlling topology. From the link level
perspective, the schemes that have been proposed can
use physical layer for cooperative communications.
Best type of transmission is taken care of using the
objective function. Two conditions are used in the
proposed scheme. They are path length and network
connectivity in order to derive network capacity. The
fundamental requirement of the network is path
length. Network connectivity is guaranteed when the
computation of objective function is done. In the
network each node can act as in charge that takes
responsibility for connections of other nodes in the
neighborhood. When neighbors are involved in the
communication, this results in end-to-end
connectivity.

III. PROTOTYPE
IMPLEMENTATION
We built a prototype application that can simulate the
concept of cooperative communication in MANET
that results in increased network capacity and
throughput while reducing the energy consumption in
the network. There are multiple nodes in MANET
and communication takes place between the source
and destination nodes using intermediate nodes for
cooperative communication. When a node fails in the
process of communication, the relay nodes take the
responsibility of data transmission in order to ensure
the successful communication between the sender
and receiver.

Fig. 2 Simulation of Cooperative Communications
and Topology Control
As shown in Figure 2, the cooperative approach is
used for successful communication between the
nodes where the communication process is carried
out by source and relay nodes. In case of any failure
in the network, the nodes cover this failure and
continue communication between the source and
destination nodes.

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
We made experiments without prototype application
that demonstrates cooperative communication in
MANET. We used .NET platform to build the
application.
We built a custom simulator prototype for simulating
the MANET with cooperative communications that
can improve the network capacity. The
implementation is done using Microsoft .NET
platform. C# programming language is used to
achieve this. The environment used for the
application and experiments is a PC with 4 GB RAM,
Core 2 dual processor running Windows 7 operating
system. The experimental results are compared with
LLISE [10] which is one of the well known schemes
that do not use cooperative communications. We also
considered worst network capacity for evaluating the
performance of the proposed system and also the
LLISE. By changing different number of node s in
MANET various experiments are made.

International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT) volume 7 number 1 Jan 2014

ISSN: 2231-2803 http://www.ijcttjournal.org Page14


Fig. 2 Number of nodes vs. network capacity
As seen in figure 2, the comparison of network
capacity is made using many nodes. The comparison
is done as per the topology control scheme that has
been implemented in this paper. Afterwards, the
results are compared with other scheme named
LLISE that do not use cooperative communications
in the worst case scenario. The proposed approach
yielded high network capacity and low energy
consumption which is ideal for MANET.

V. CONCLUSION
In this paper we studied the cooperative
communications in MANET. The paper considers
physical layer for cooperative communications.
Recently Guan et al. [7] presented a scheme is which
is based on the topology control of the moving
mobile nodes in the MANET. It has been observed
that the topology control scheme in the physical layer
can increase network capacity with the help of
cooperative communications. We built a prototype
application in order to implement cooperative
communications in MANET. Our empirical results
revealed that the proposed scheme is effective and is
able to reduce energy consumption while increasing
the network capacity.

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