Abstract

Multiparty sessions are the basis of several important applications. Audio/video conferencing, distance learning and gaming are some of the examples. So far, very little attention has been devoted to the applications for ad hoc networks. In contrast to conventional networks, ad hoc networks are formed by a set of devices that communicate without using a pre-existing network infrastructure. Multiparty session control faces new challenges in ad hoc networks: peer-to-peer communication, limited resources and transient network connectivity. This thesis addresses the most critical component of multiparty sessions in peer-to-peer ad hoc networks: signaling. Signaling requirements are derived and existing signaling protocols such as SIP, H.323 and ICEBERG signaling are analyzed. By discussing and comparing alternative signaling architectures, we propose a novel signaling scheme based on clustering architecture. The signaling scheme is implemented as an extension to SIP. A prototype is built to evaluate the feasibility and performance of the signaling scheme.