Tree based variable length address autoconfiguration protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

The purpose of an address autoconfiguration protocol for Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) is to assign a unique address to each node and maintain the address pool. Address allocation in ad hoc networks is dynamic. Node mobility and infrastructure-less behavior of ad hoc networks makes address autoconfiguration a difficult task. In this paper, a scheme is proposed for address autoconfiguration of MANETs. The proposed scheme constructs the network as a virtual tree and uses variable length addressing scheme. Nodes are classified into coordinator and normal nodes. Coordinator nodes assign addresses to new nodes and reclaim addresses when necessary. One of the coordinator nodes acts as a header node and it increments the address length to accommodate new nodes if the address range is exhausted. Normal nodes act as relaying nodes between new nodes and coordinator nodes. This scheme uniformly distributes coordinator nodes across the network to reduce address latency and to overcome uneven density problem. It designates one fourth of the total nodes as coordinator nodes to reduce overhead.