A Dynamic Approach for the Selection of Super Peers in Ad Hoc Networks

Peer-to-peer and mobile ad hoc networks have established a strong connection due to the fact that peer-to-peer models present effective solutions for decentralized systems. Pure and hybrid peer-to-peer networks have propagated as design models for such decentralized systems. Super-peer networks, in which some nodes (super peers) are selected and assigned special roles, have been proposed as a compromise tradeoff between the two models. In this paper, we study the selection of super peers in mobile ad hoc networks. We investigate two approaches to selection and study their impacts on network performance. Based on the analysis of empirical results, we propose and evaluate a new dynamic approach. Simulation results show a significant improvement over existing selection techniques.