Lha: logical hierarchical addressing protocol for mobile ad-hoc networks

A mobile Ad-hoc network (MANET) is an autonomous system of mobile routers that are self-organizing and decentralized without any need for infrastructure support. While much effort has been made to handle seamless handoff by developing routing algorithms, other fundamental issues such as dynamic and fast addressing mechanisms were neglected. In the paper, we present a new address auto-configuration protocol named Logical Hierarchical Addressing (LHA) which is designed to work in MANET. The proposed protocol allows nodes to get a unique address fast and dynamically. LHA efficiently supports merging and partitioning of networks. We present an analytical model to investigate the performance of LHA and compare it with the token-based protocol. Our results show that the LHA protocol reduces the latency to obtain an IP address by 50%.