Comments on: Sidewinder: A Predictive Data Forwarding Protocol for Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks http://www.keally.org/2009/05/13/sidewinder/ Life of the ABD grad student... Mon, 31 Jan 2011 12:46:20 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Richard http://www.keally.org/2009/05/13/sidewinder/comment-page-1/#comment-225 Richard Sat, 16 May 2009 02:50:38 +0000 http://www.keally.org/?p=674#comment-225 Wish I could provide more useful feedback but most of it was over my head. It sounds like Sidewinder would make transmissions more efficient but I wasn't able to determine if it would make it more reliable as well. I used to be more involved with moving objects and networks at my old job. Basically, a commercial airplane moving in the air would beam down information to fixed stations on the ground that we eventually consumed and read. To make it short, we had to accept that we would lose .5% - 1% of our messages just because the data flow from the aircraft to our system wasn't reliable. In a program related to ours, having every message was very important for legal reasons. They had to spend thousands of man hours thinking about alternative and recovery scenarios because the unreliability of the network. I guess Sidewinder wouldn't be applicable because in this scenario, most of the network (everything but the aircraft) isn't fixed. I bet it would have some applications on Future Combat Systems which is another Boeing project. In FCS, each node - a UAV, a tank, etc - is supposed to be interconnected with each other. Not only would the shape of the network move, it would be expected that parts of it could get blown up! Wish I could provide more useful feedback but most of it was over my head.

It sounds like Sidewinder would make transmissions more efficient but I wasn’t able to determine if it would make it more reliable as well.

I used to be more involved with moving objects and networks at my old job. Basically, a commercial airplane moving in the air would beam down information to fixed stations on the ground that we eventually consumed and read. To make it short, we had to accept that we would lose .5% – 1% of our messages just because the data flow from the aircraft to our system wasn’t reliable. In a program related to ours, having every message was very important for legal reasons. They had to spend thousands of man hours thinking about alternative and recovery scenarios because the unreliability of the network.

I guess Sidewinder wouldn’t be applicable because in this scenario, most of the network (everything but the aircraft) isn’t fixed. I bet it would have some applications on Future Combat Systems which is another Boeing project. In FCS, each node – a UAV, a tank, etc – is supposed to be interconnected with each other. Not only would the shape of the network move, it would be expected that parts of it could get blown up!

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