Consistent Global Data Structure in MANET

Our ultimate goal is to provide application developers with the ability to maintain a consistent global data structure in a setting in which mobile hosts come and go as they please and engage in reliable transient collaborative activities. In this context, the group membership service needs to provide an accurate snapshot of the membership view all the time, and a message entrusted in a view shall be guaranteed to be delivered to members in that view, despite motion and motion-induced disconnections. This property makes the group membership service useful for many mobile applications, such as those we mentioned earlier. Next, we seek to formally define the group membership problem.