New Distributed Initialization Protocols for IEEE 802.11 Based Single Hop Ad Hoc Networks

Leader election and initialization are important fundamental tasks to set up an ad hoc network, which involves assigning each station, a distinct ID (e.g. IP address). IEEE 802.11 is extensively used in simulation studies or developing testbeds for ad hoc networks. Existing solutions to leader election and initialization diverge considerably from IEEE 802.11 standard and thus require major modifications in the IEEE 802.11 standard. In this paper, contention based leader election and initialization protocols for IEEE 802.11 based single hop ad hoc networks have been proposed and their performance is evaluated using extensive simulations. A method for estimating the remaining number of stations to be initialized (when the number of stations is unknown in a network) using the number of packet collisions within a fixed time period is also presented. The simulation results indicate that the proposed protocols have comparable performance with existing schemes and can be incorporated into the IEEE 802.11 standard with minor modifications.