A scalable location management scheme in mobile ad-hoc networks

In ad-hoc networks, geographical routing protocols take advantage of location information so that stateless and efficient routing is feasible. However such routing protocols are heavily dependent on the existence of scalable location management services. We present a novel scheme to perform scalable location management. With any location management schemes, a specific node, A, in the network trusts a small subset of nodes, namely its location servers, and periodically updates them with its location. Our approach adopts a similar strategy, but a different and original approach to select such location servers. First, we present a selection algorithm used to designate location servers of a node by its identifier. Second, we propose a hierarchical addressing model for mobile ad-hoc networks, where node locations could be represented at different accuracy levels. With this approach, different location servers may carry location information of different levels of accuracy and only a small set of location servers needs to be updated when the node moves. Through rigorous theoretical analysis, we are able to show that the control message overhead is bounded under our scheme. Finally, simulation results are presented to demonstrate the performance of our location management scheme.