IPv6 autoconfiguration for hierarchical MANETs with efficient leader election algorithm

To connect a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) with an IP network and to carryout communication, ad hoc network node needs to be configured with unique IP adress. Dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) server autoconfigure nodes in wired networks. However, this cannot be applied to ad hoc network without introducing some changes in auto configuration mechanism, due to intrinsic properties (i.e., multi-hop, dynamic, and distributed nature) of the network. In this paper, we propose a scalable autoconfiguration scheme for MANETs with hierarchical topology consisting of leader and member nodes, by considering the global Internet connectivity with minimum overhead. In our proposed scheme, a joining node selects one of the pre-configured nodes for its duplicate address detection (DAD) operation. We reduce overhead and make our scheme scalable by eliminating the broadcast of DAD messages in the network. We also propose the group leader election algorithm, which takes into account the resources, density, and position information of a node to select a new leader. Our simulation results show that our proposed scheme is effective to reduce the overhead and is scalable. Also, it is shown that the proposed scheme provides an efficient method to heal the network after partitioning and merging by enhancing the role of bordering nodes in the group.