AADP: Ad hoc address distribution protocol

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a wireless, mobile and infra-structure-less network with self-configuring nodes which route the messages on their own. Lack of infrastructure makes MANET unique and desirable. It, however, complicates the task of address allocation in MANET as nodes now have to regulate the entire process of allocation by communicating within themselves as well as monitor the changes that occur in the network. Moreover, the same feature induces events like partitioning, merging, etc in the network which are never encountered in a conventional wired or wireless network. Consequently, classical addressing protocols are inadequate for MANET and hence, cannot be used. A number of protocols have been propounded in a bid to handle the problem of address allocation. Majority of these protocols albeit promising, fail to handle some scenarios efficiently. In this paper, we propose and analyze a filter-based addressing protocol named AADP, for unique address allocation in MANET. The focus of our analysis is on complex events such as simultaneous joining and merging. We also provide a brief mathematical analysis of our protocol. Simulation results show that our protocol is robust to packet losses, handles partitioning and merging efficiently and has an upper hand over the other protocols.