Virtual dynamic backbone for mobile ad hoc networks

In this paper, we propose the virtual dynamic backbone protocol (VDBP) for ad hoc networks. VDBP constructs a backbone from a subset of the nodes in the network satisfying these two properties: (i) Any node in the network is either a backbone node or is a neighbor of a backbone node (dominating set property), (ii) any pair of backbone nodes is connected via other backbone nodes (connectivity property). VDBP provides explicit mechanisms to handle the mobility of the nodes and depends on local computations to a large extent. Thus it is highly self-organizing even under highly dynamic topologies. Such a backbone can be potentially used by a routing protocol to disseminate broadcast or multicast messages as well as to handle QoS traffic in mobile ad hoc networks. We present the performance of VDBP in terms of backbone size and connectivity using simulations.