A Middleware Framework for Robust Applications in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Wireless ad hoc networks are becoming an increasingly common platform for bringing computation to environments with minimal infrastructure. Increasingly, applications require robust fault-tolerance guarantees, despite a challenging network environment. In this paper, we introduce a new middleware framework for wireless ad hoc networks to aid the development of robust algorithms. Our framework is based on the following three components: (1) receiver-side collision detection, used for identifying inconsistencies caused by unreliable communication; (2) robust round synchronization, used for emulating a strictly synchronized multi-hop network using only basic timeliness assumptions about the environment; and (3) contention management, used for reducing message collision and supporting eventually reliable message delivery. We demonstrate the utility of our framework by showing how it can be used to implement a simple fault-tolerant broadcast protocol, and discuss algorithms to implement each of the components.