Design and implementation of a leader election algorithm in hierarchy mobile ad hoc network

Leader election is a very important problem in wired networks and mobile ad hoc networks. In this paper, we propose a leader election algorithm for hierarchy ad hoc network. For high-level ad hoc network, we adopt synchronous leader election algorithm plus a vice president mechanism. For bottom-level ad hoc network, we design an algorithm with the collision avoidance mechanism which can decrease the message and time complexity. Numerical results show that in the same network environment synchronous algorithm is better than asynchronous for time complexity, if the vice president exists, the time complexity can be tremendously reduced. Our experimental results shows that our proposed algorithm is quite effective, and it can adapt to hierarchy ad hoc network in which high-level nodes are relatively static and bottom-level nodes frequently move.