A Wave Algorithm for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

In designing distributed algorithms, several general problems appear fre- quently as subtasks, including broadcasting, leader election, mutual exclusion, computing a global function of which each process holds part of the input. Each of these tasks requires a basic scheme, called wave algorithms, that en- sure the participation of all processes. This paper presents a wave algorithm for mobile ad hoc networks in which links may fail or reform. Without assum- ing that the network topology is always connected, the algorithm only requires the network to be consistently connected, a very mild condition imposed on the network ensuring that each message ooded by a process will be received by all processes eventually. The algorithm guarantees that a decide event eventually occurs in each process, and each decide event is causally preceded by an event of each other process.