Performance analysis and enhancement for backbone based wireless mobile ad hoc networks

In this paper, we present an extended mobile backbone network (MBN) topology synthesis algorithm (ETSA) for constructing and maintaining a dynamic backbone structure in mobile wireless ad hoc networks. For conventional backbone formation algorithms (such as Connected Dominating Set construction algorithms) to operate correctly, perfect neighborhood knowledge is required. However, in a wireless ad hoc network, both control message losses and asynchronous timers among nodes can lead to imperfect neighborhood information. Thus, two restricting rules are introduced in this paper for the election of backbone nodes that are shown to improve asynchronous, distributed and stable operation of the algorithm. The scalability and efficiency of backbone based routing in ad hoc networks depend on the overhead introduced by the formation of a connected backbone network (BNet) and the size of the backbone network. We prove that the size of the backbone network synthesized by this algorithm is independent of nodal density. We also prove that the extended topology synthesis algorithm introduced in this paper has constant O(1) time complexity and yields a constant O(1) communication overhead factor per node.