Geographically bound mobile agent in MANET

A location-specific data retrieval, which is data retrieval from nodes in a designated region at the time, is an attractive application in a mobile ad-hoc network (MANET). However, almost all nodes in a MANET are powered by batteries, the location-specific data retrieval should involve a small number of messages. In this paper, we use a mobile agent to retrieve the location-specific data. A mobile agent migrates to a node in a designated region, and retrieves data from nodes in this region. Since, after migration, the agent can communicate with nodes in the designated region through low overhead short length hops, the mobile agent can retrieve data at low message cost for long periods, even if the owner of this agent moves around. However, even after migrating to node in the designated region, in order to stay near this region, a mobile agent should migrate to other nodes in response to the movement of the node hosting this agent. In this paper, we propose the geographically bound mobile agent (GBMA) which is a mobile agent that periodically migrates in order to always be located in a designated region. In order to clarify where the GBMA should be located and when the GBMA starts to migrate, two geographic zones are set to the GBMA: required zone and expected zone. The required zone ease tracking of the GBMA, and the expected zone ease adjustment of the GBMA migration timing.