Message complexity analysis of address autoconfiguration protocols in MANETs

The job of an address autoconfiguration protocol [1][6][8][9] is to automatically assign a unique network address to an un-configured node in the network so that it can communicate with the other configured nodes in the network via multihop wireless links. The address autoconfiguration protocol needs to be fast enough and also it should consume less overhead for configuring a new node i.e. each node needs to be configured with minimum delay and packet loss. Apart from configuring a new node, the address autoconfiguration protocol must be robust enough to handle the network partitioning as well as the network mergers that occur frequently in mobile adhoc networks (MANETs) due to the node mobility. The objective of this paper is to calculate the upper bound on the number of messages required for configuring a new node, for existing address autoconfiguration protocols. The other research objective is to calculate the bound on message overhead involved in partitioning as well as in merging. These bounds are very useful in different application such as military scenarios, intelligent transport system (ITS) context where mobility is very high and this leads to frequent network partitions and mergers.