RAA: a ring-based address autoconfiguration protocol in mobile ad hoc networks

The problem for dynamic IP address assignment is manifest in mobile ad hoc networks, especially in 4G all-IP-based heterogeneous networks. Existing solutions are mainly riveted to decentralized algorithms, applying a large number of broadcast messages to (1) maintain available IP address pools and (2) ensure no address duplication occurring. In this paper, we propose a ring-based address autoconfiguration protocol to configure node addresses. This work aims at the decentralized ring-based address autoconfiguration (DRAA) protocol, which has the advantage of low latency, low communication overhead and high uninterruptible connection. The DRAA protocol is a low-latency solution because each node independently allocates partial IP addresses and does not need to perform the duplicate addresses detection (DAD) during the node-join operation. Communication overhead is significantly lessened in that DRAA protocol uses the logical ring, thus utilizing fewer control messages solely by means of uni-cast messages to distribute address resources and to retrieve invalid addresses. Furthermore, if duplicate addresses are shown at network merging, the DRAA protocol checks the number of both TCP connections and of nodes to allow duplicate nodes to rejoin the smaller network so that lost connections are fast re-connected. To improve communication overhead and provide the evenness of address resources, the centralized ring-based address autoconfiguration (CRAA) protocol is discussed. The CRAA protocol reduces larger numbers of broadcast messages during network merging. The other contribution is that our CRAA protocol also has an even capability so that address resources can be evenly distributed in each node in networks; this accounts for the reason our solution is suitable for large-scale networks. Finally, the performance analysis illustrates performance achievements of RAA protocols. The simulation result shows that the DRAA protocol has the shortest latency, that the CRAA protocol has the capability to evenly distribute address resources and that both of DRAA and CRAA protocols are the good solutions which achieve low communication overhead and high uninterruptible connection.