Aeronautical Ad Hoc Networks

There has been an enormous growth in Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) in land based small to medium size networks with relatively strict power and resources. In this paper the concept of ad hoc networking between aircraft is introduced, which can be considered as a novel approach in increasing the data rate and practicality of future in-flight broadband Internet access. This method also reduces the Internet traffic load on satellite nodes and also propagation delay for real-time traffic transmissions, by effectively bypassing the satellite link for non-real time data. A dynamic routing algorithm is also proposed for efficient routing in this kind of system. A new cost metric for increasing path duration is introduced to assist routing in the proposed ad hoc network.