Using Multiple Radios for Ad Hoc Backbone Construction and Maintenance

We investigate the performance of a new distributed protocol for setting up and maintaining a backbone for multi-hop mobile networks with multiple radio interfaces. Our solution, termed MM-Backs, is effective in producing backbones with limited size, while being robust and reliable in the face of node mobility. We compare our protocol with a solution for mobile backbones running in single-radio networks that has been shown to outperform previous backbone formation protocols. MM-Backs provides backbones of reasonable size, with superior connectivity, shorter route lengths, higher resilience and lower maintenance-related overhead.