A Cell Biology Inspired Model for Managing
Packet Broadcasts in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks
Sulochana J. Sooriyaarachchi*, Anil Fernando**, Chandana D. Gamage**Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa, 10400, Sri Lanka**Centre for Vision Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP), Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences,
University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH
sulochanas@cse.mrt.ac.lk, w.fernando@surrey.ac.uk, chandag@cse.mrt.ac.lk

Abstract—The modern computing paradigm is moving towards personal devices that incorporate wireless networking, mobility,and collaborative applications. The networking paradigm that best matches this scenario is the mobile ad-hoc network (MANET). A
common instance of a MANET is the dense MANET that can be expected in any setting where large number of people congregate
such as movie theatres, sports stadiums, shopping malls, transportation hubs, lobby of public offices, lecture rooms, etc. The existing
packet transmission protocols for MANETs are inefficient for dense MANETs due to packet broadcast storms for stateless protocols
and non-availability of anchor nodes for stateful protocols. This paper presents a new packet broadcast model developed based oncell biology and provides simulation results on protocol efficiency. As smart phone devices and collaborative applications proliferate
among users, the proposed dense MANET protocol could provide real benefits to Internet enabled users and devices.
Keyword—Mobile ad-hoc networks, Packet broadcasts, Cellular automata.
Sulochana Sooriyaarachchi was born in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka on the 18th of October 1981. She obtained her BSc Eng. (Hons)in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka in 2006. She then joined the Department ofComputer Science and Engineering in the University of Moratuwa as a lecturer and obtained her MSc in Computer Science from thesame department in 2010. She is currently pursuing her PhD in the University of Moratuwa conducting research in the area of routing
and control mechanisms in mobile ad-hoc networks.

Anil Fernando leads the Video Communications group at the University of Surrey, UK. He has been working in video coding andcommunications since 1998 and has published more than 270 international refereed journal and proceeding papers in this area
including a book on video communications. Furthermore, he has published more than 150 international refereed journal andconference papers in multimedia communications. He has contributed to several international (ROMEO, MUSCADE, DIOMEDES,VISNET, etc) projects and currently he is leading an interactive video communications project (ACTION-TV) funded by the European
Union on Media communications.

Chandana Gamage is a senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka.
He received his PhD from Monash University, Australia, MEng from AIT, Thailand and BSc Eng Hons from University of Moratuwa
and worked as a postdoctoral research scientist in Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Dr Gamage has research interests
in computer security and cryptography, enterprise software architectures and embedded systems and has published in leading
conferences in these areas.