Ad-Hoc Network for Unmanned Mobile Vehicles: Implementation and Experiments

Abstract

This study presents an ad-hoc network system for unmanned mobile vehicles (UMVs), with an emphasis on system-level integration and experimental validation using customized hardware and software. A standalone ad-hoc module is developed by integrating open-source firmware and the batman-adv protocol, enabling multi-hop communication while remaining transparent to onboard control software. This design allows UMVs to participate in an ad-hoc network without requiring modifications to existing control or middleware stacks. Outdoor field experiments are conducted to evaluate multi-hop communication performance in terms of throughput, latency, and packet loss under representative experimental conditions. In addition, complementary case studies investigate the functional feasibility of supervisory UMV control and monitoring over multi-hop links. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system provides a practical reference implementation for integrated multi-UMV networking in outdoor experimental settings. © 2026 The Authors.