My main research interest can be summarised as “networking when it’s difficult” - ad hoc networking”.

Imagine a set of wireless devices (say PDAs), each of which has limited capacity (memory, CPU, battery), and the wireless media (radio interfaces, say WiFi) connecting these devices having limited capacity (bandwidth, reliability, ...) - a capacity which varies over time and with the traffic on the network.

Imagine furthermore, that these wireless devices are scattered over a large geographic area, such that in order for any two devices to be able to communicate, intermediary devices must act as “relay nodes” (routers) and forward the traffic.

Imagine finally that the topology of this network is both a priori unknown (no GSM-like cell-towers or WiFi-like access points) and is highly dynamic - what with wireless interfaces and portable devices, the users are likely to move around.

We then have the basic pathology of an ad hoc network: low-capacity mobile devices forming a dynamic multi-hop topology using low-capacity wireless interfaces - and yet, we still want to be able to form a network and communicate within this network, as well as with outside nodes. That is, essentially, what I am interested in, and what OLSR has been developed and standardised as a component for facilitating.

Please consult my publications page for further details.