Extending a routing protocol for mobile robot mesh networking

Abstract

Mobile ad hoc mesh networks can involve a highly dynamic routing topology, characterized by rapidly changing link qualities. Existing routing protocols under-perform in this environment, yet this is precisely the situation faced by highly mobile robots operating without access to existing network infrastructure. We develop an outage probability estimation framework to compute a link quality metric within the B.A.T.M.A.N. routing protocol. This results in a unified data fusion process capable of incorporating diverse kinds of measurements in a single metric and can act as a drop-in replacement for the metric in the existing routing protocol. Our formulation exploits robot position information along with probing packet measurements and a radio signal strength model for fast link quality estimation of rapidly changing links.