Consistent Group Membership in Ad Hoc Networks

The design of ad hoc mobile applications often requires the availability of a consistent view of the application state among the participating hosts. Such views are important because they simplify both the programming and verification tasks. Essential to constructing a consistent view is the ability to know what hosts are within proximity of each other, i.e., form a group in support of the particular application. In this paper we propose an algorithm that allows hosts within communication range to maintain a consistent view of the group membership despite movement and frequent disconnections. The novel features of this algorithm are its reliance on location information and a conservative notion of logical connectivity that creates the illusion of announced disconnection. Movement patterns and delays are factored in the policy that determines which physical connections are susceptible to disconnection. Keywords Mobility, ad hoc network, group membership, consistency.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2001
• Where: ICSE
• Authors: Gruia-Catalin Roman, Qingfeng Huang, Ali Hazemi
• Keywords: Ad Hoc, Consistent View, Hoc Mobile Applications, ICSE 2001, Software Engineering