A Highly Adaptive Leader Election Algorithm for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract – Leader election has been identified as a basic building block in distributed computing. MANETs are distinct from traditional distributed systems as they are dynamic and self-organizing networks because of their dynamic wireless link formation and removal, network partitioning and disconnections, limited bandwidth and energy and highly variable message delay. These characteristics makes the design of leader election protocols even more challenging than in classical distributed networks. In this paper, we present a leader election algorithm taking into account irregular topologies and mobility of the nodes. This algorithm elects as leader the node with the highest priority among the nodes in its connected component, where priority can be defined in a variety of ways. The paper also presents proofs of correctness to exhibit the fairness of this algorithm