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Showing papers on "Ad hoc wireless distribution service published in 2004"



Book
01 Jan 2004
TL;DR: The book starts off with the fundamentals of wireless networking (wireless PANs, LANs, MANs, WANs, and wireless Internet) and goes on to address such current topics as Wi-Fi networks, optical wireless networks, and hybrid wireless architectures.
Abstract: Practical design and performance solutions for every ad hoc wireless networkAd Hoc Wireless Networks comprise mobile devices that use wireless transmission for communication. They can be set up anywhere and any time because they eliminate the complexities of infrastructure setup and central administration-and they have enormous commercial and military potential. Now, there's a book that addresses every major issue related to their design and performance. Ad Hoc Wireless Networks: Architectures and Protocols presents state-of-the-art techniques and solutions, and supports them with easy-to-understand examples. The book starts off with the fundamentals of wireless networking (wireless PANs, LANs, MANs, WANs, and wireless Internet) and goes on to address such current topics as Wi-Fi networks, optical wireless networks, and hybrid wireless architectures. Coverage includes: Medium access control, routing, multicasting, and transport protocols QoS provisioning, energy management, security, multihop pricing, and much more In-depth discussion of wireless sensor networks and ultra wideband technology More than 200 examples and end-of-chapter problemsAd Hoc Wireless Networks is an invaluable resource for every network engineer, technical manager, and researcher designing or building ad hoc wireless networks.

1,629 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
01 Jan 2004
TL;DR: In this article, a wide range of routing protocols have been proposed in the literature and a performance comparison of all routing protocols and suggest which protocols may perform best in large networks is provided.
Abstract: The 1990s have seen a rapid growth of research interests in mobile ad hoc networking. The infrastructureless and the dynamic nature of these networks demands new set of networking strategies to be implemented in order to provide efficient end-to-end communication. This, along with the diverse application of these networks in many different scenarios such as battlefield and disaster recovery, have seen MANETs being researched by many different organisations and institutes. MANETs employ the traditional TCP/IP structure to provide end-to-end communication between nodes. However, due to their mobility and the limited resource in wireless networks, each layer in the TCP/IP model require redefinition or modifications to function efficiently in MANETs. One interesting research area in MANET is routing. Routing in the MANETs is a challenging task and has received a tremendous amount of attention from researches. This has led to development of many different routing protocols for MANETs, and each author of each proposed protocol argues that the strategy proposed provides an improvement over a number of different strategies considered in the literature for a given network scenario. Therefore, it is quite difficult to determine which protocols may perform best under a number of different network scenarios, such as increasing node density and traffic. In this paper, we provide an overview of a wide range of routing protocols proposed in the literature. We also provide a performance comparison of all routing protocols and suggest which protocols may perform best in large networks.

1,281 citations


Book
01 May 2004

1,064 citations


Proceedings ArticleDOI
30 Aug 2004
TL;DR: A detailed, empirical evaluation of the performance of three link-quality metrics---ETX, per-hop RTT, andper-hop packet pair---and compare them against minimum hop count finds that the ETX metric has the best performance when all nodes are stationary and the hop-count metric outperforms all of the link- quality metrics in a scenario where the sender is mobile.
Abstract: Routing protocols for wireless ad hoc networks have traditionally focused on finding paths with minimum hop count. However, such paths can include slow or lossy links, leading to poor throughput. A routing algorithm can select better paths by explicitly taking the quality of the wireless links into account. In this paper, we conduct a detailed, empirical evaluation of the performance of three link-quality metrics---ETX, per-hop RTT, and per-hop packet pair---and compare them against minimum hop count. We study these metrics using a DSR-based routing protocol running in a wireless testbed. We find that the ETX metric has the best performance when all nodes are stationary. We also find that the per-hop RTT and per-hop packet-pair metrics perform poorly due to self-interference. Interestingly, the hop-count metric outperforms all of the link-quality metrics in a scenario where the sender is mobile.

965 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: DakNet, an ad hoc network that uses wireless technology to provide asynchronous digital connectivity, is evidence that the marriage of wireless and asynchronous service may indeed be the beginning of a road to universal broadband connectivity.
Abstract: DakNet provides extraordinarily low-cost digital communication, letting remote villages leapfrog past the expense of traditional connectivity solutions and begin development of a full-coverage broadband wireless infrastructure. What is the basis for a progressive, market-driven migration from e-governance to universal broadband connectivity that local users will pay for? DakNet, an ad hoc network that uses wireless technology to provide asynchronous digital connectivity, is evidence that the marriage of wireless and asynchronous service may indeed be the beginning of a road to universal broadband connectivity. DakNet has been successfully deployed in remote parts of both India and Cambodia at a cost two orders of magnitude less than that of traditional landline solutions.

819 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper presents their own distributed algorithm that outperforms the existing algorithms for minimum CDS and establishes the Ω(nlog n) lower bound on the message complexity of any distributed algorithm for nontrivial CDS, thus message-optimal.
Abstract: Connected dominating set (CDS) has been proposed as virtual backbone or spine of wireless ad hoc networks. Three distributed approximation algorithms have been proposed in the literature for minimum CDS. In this paper, we first reinvestigate their performances. None of these algorithms have constant approximation factors. Thus these algorithms cannot guarantee to generate a CDS of small size. Their message complexities can be as high as O(n2), and their time complexities may also be as large as O(n2) and O(n3). We then present our own distributed algorithm that outperforms the existing algorithms. This algorithm has an approximation factor of at most 8, O(n) time complexity and O(n log n) message complexity. By establishing the Ω(n log n) lower bound on the message complexity of any distributed algorithm for nontrivial CDS, our algorithm is thus message-optimal.

652 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
01 May 2004
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe the state of research in secure ad hoc routing protocols and its research challenges, and discuss current approaches for establishing cryptographic keys in ad hoc networks and present a review of attacks on ad hoc network routing protocols.
Abstract: Ad hoc networks use mobile nodes to enable communication outside wireless transmission range. Attacks on ad hoc network routing protocols disrupt network performance and reliability. The article reviews attacks on ad hoc networks and discusses current approaches for establishing cryptographic keys in ad hoc networks. We describe the state of research in secure ad hoc routing protocols and its research challenges.

581 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A cross-layer design framework to the multiple access problem in contention-based wireless ad hoc networks is introduced, limiting multiuser interference to increase single-hop throughput and reducing power consumption to prolong battery life.
Abstract: In this paper, we introduce a cross-layer design framework to the multiple access problem in contention-based wireless ad hoc networks. The motivation for this study is twofold, limiting multiuser interference to increase single-hop throughput and reducing power consumption to prolong battery life. We focus on next neighbor transmissions where nodes are required to send information packets to their respective receivers subject to a constraint on the signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio. The multiple access problem is solved via two alternating phases, namely scheduling and power control. The scheduling algorithm is essential to coordinate the transmissions of independent users in order to eliminate strong levels of interference (e.g., self-interference) that cannot be overcome by power control. On the other hand, power control is executed in a distributed fashion to determine the admissible power vector, if one exists, that can be used by the scheduled users to satisfy their single-hop transmission requirements. This is done for two types of networks, namely time-division multiple-access (TDMA) and TDMA/code-division multiple-access wireless ad hoc networks.

546 citations


Proceedings ArticleDOI
01 Oct 2004
TL;DR: A new, realistic model of node motion based on the movement of vehicles on real street maps is presented, which is compared with the Random Waypoint mobility model, the most widely used mobility model.
Abstract: Without realistic modeling of node mobility, simulation evaluation of performance of mobile ad hoc networks may not correlate well with performance in a real deployment. In this work, we present a new, realistic model of node motion based on the movement of vehicles on real street maps. Our model can be used with the ns-2 network simulator. We compare our model with the Random Waypoint mobility model, the most widely used mobility model. Results show that, in many ways, the Random Waypoint mobility model is a good approximation for simulating the motion of vehicles on a road, but there are situations in which our new model is better suited.

465 citations


Proceedings ArticleDOI
02 Apr 2004
TL;DR: Computer simulation shows that compared to the original ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) routing scheme, the second solution can verify 75% to 98% of the route to the destination depending on the pause times at a minimum cost of the delay in the networks.
Abstract: The black hole problem is one of the security attacks that occur in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). We present two possible solutions. The first is to find more than one route to the destination. The second is to exploit the packet sequence number included in any packet header. Computer simulation shows that compared to the original ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) routing scheme, the second solution can verify 75% to 98% of the route to the destination depending on the pause times at a minimum cost of the delay in the networks.

Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: This paper proposes a new position-based routing scheme called Anchor-based Street and Traffic Aware Routing (A-STAR), designed specifically for IVCS in a city environment, and shows significant performance improvement in a comparative simulation study with other similar routing approaches.
Abstract: One of the major issues that affect the performance of Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANET) is routing. Recently, position-based routing for MANET is found to be a very promising routing strategy for inter-vehicular communication systems (IVCS). However, position-based routing for IVCS in a built-up city environment faces greater challenges because of potentially more uneven distribution of vehicular nodes, constrained mobility, and difficult signal reception due to radio obstacles such as high-rise buildings. This paper proposes a new position-based routing scheme called Anchor-based Street and Traffic Aware Routing (A-STAR), designed specifically for IVCS in a city environment. Unique to A-STAR is the usage of information on city bus routes to identify an anchor path with high connectivity for packet delivery. Along with a new recovery strategy for packets routed to a local maximum, the proposed protocol shows significant performance improvement in a comparative simulation study with other similar routing approaches.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The mobile ad hoc network researchers face the challenge of achieving full functionality with good performance while linking the new technology to the rest of the Internet, and the MobileMan cross-layer architecture offers an alternative.
Abstract: Mobile ad hoc network researchers face the challenge of achieving full functionality with good performance while linking the new technology to the rest of the Internet. A strict layered design is not flexible enough to cope with the dynamics of manet environments, however, and will prevent performance optimizations. The MobileMan cross-layer architecture offers an alternative to the pure layered approach that promotes stricter local interaction among protocols in a manet node.


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Analytical results and simulation experiments indicate that BLR provides efficient and robust routing in highly dynamic mobile ad hoc networks.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The paper presents the mechanisms that compose the new MAC: the basic RR-ALOHA protocol, an efficient broadcast service and the reservation of point-to-point channels that exploit parallel transmissions.
Abstract: Ad-hoc networking, though an attractive solution for many applications, still has many unsolved issues, such as the hiddenterminal problem, flexible and prompt access, QoS provisioning, and efficient broadcast service. In this paper we present a MAC architecture able to solve the above issues in environments with no power consumption limitations, such as networks for inter-vehicle communications. This new architecture is based on a completely distributed access technique, RR-ALOHA, capable of dynamically establishing, for each active terminal in the network, a reliable single-hop broadcast channel on a slotted/framed structure. Though the proposed architecture uses a slotted channel it can be adapted to operate on the physical layer of different standards, including the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access TDD, and IEEE 802.11. The paper presents the mechanisms that compose the new MAC: the basic RR-ALOHA protocol, an efficient broadcast service and the reservation of point-to-point channels that exploit parallel transmissions. Some basic performance figures are discussed to prove the effectiveness of the protocol.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
07 Mar 2004
TL;DR: A hybrid approach (HybridCache) is proposed, which can further improve the performance by taking advantage of CacheData and CachePath while avoiding their weaknesses, and can significantly reduce the query delay and message complexity when compared to other caching schemes.
Abstract: Most researches in ad hoc networks focus on routing, and not much work has been done on data access. A common technique used to improve the performance of data access is caching. Cooperative caching, which allows the sharing and coordination of cached data among multiple nodes, can further explore the potential of the caching techniques. Due to mobility and resource constraints of ad hoc networks, cooperative caching techniques designed for wired network may not be applicable to ad hoc networks. In this paper, we design and evaluate cooperative caching techniques to efficiently support data access in ad hoc networks. We first propose two schemes: cachedata which caches the data, and cachepath which caches the data path. After analyzing the performance of those two schemes, we propose a hybrid approach (hybridcache) which can further improve the performance by taking advantage of cachedata and cachepath while avoiding their weaknesses. Simulation results show that the proposed schemes can significantly reduce the query delay and message complexity when compared to other caching schemes.

01 Dec 2004
TL;DR: This paper presents the MOCA (MObile Certificate Authority) key management framework designed to provide authentication service for ad hoc wireless networks, and presents a set of guidelines for a secure configuration of threshold cryptography to maintain strong security.
Abstract: An authentication service is one of the the most fundamental building blocks for providing communication security. In this paper, we present the MOCA (MObile Certificate Authority) key management framework designed to provide authentication service for ad hoc wireless networks. MOCA is a distributed certificate authority (CA) based on threshold cryptography. We present a set of guidelines for a secure configuration of threshold cryptography to maintain strong security. MOCA utilizes a carefully selected set of mobile nodes to function as a collective certificate authority while the MOCA nodes are kept anonymous. Equipped with a novel routing protocol designed to support the unique communication pattern for certification traffic, MOCA achieves high availability without sacrificing security. Both the security of the framework and the operational performance is evaluated with rigorous analysis and extensive simulation study.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The results indicate that despite its improvement in reducing route request packets, CBRP has a higher overhead than DSR because of its periodic hello messages while AODV's end-to-end packet delay is the shortest when compared to DSR and CBRP.
Abstract: A mobile ad hoc network is a collection of autonomous mobile nodes that communicate with each other over wireless links. Such networks are expected to play an increasingly important role in future civilian and military settings, being useful for providing communication support where no fixed infrastructure exists or the deployment of a fixed infrastructure is not economically profitable and movement of communicating parties is possible. However, since there is no stationary infrastructure such as base stations, mobile hosts need to operate as routers in order to maintain the information about the network connectivity. Therefore, a number of routing protocols have been proposed for ad hoc wireless networks. In this paper, we study and compare the performance of the following routing protocols AODV, PAODV (preemptive AODV), CBRP, DSR, and DSDV. A variety of workload and scenarios, as characterized by mobility, load and size of the ad hoc network were simulated. Our results indicate that despite its improvement in reducing route request packets, CBRP has a higher overhead than DSR because of its periodic hello messages while AODV's end-to-end packet delay is the shortest when compared to DSR and CBRP. PAODV has shown little improvements over AODV.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
26 Sep 2004
TL;DR: This paper design and study DoS attacks in order to assess the damage that difficult-to-detect attackers can cause, and quantifies via simulations and analytical modeling the scalability of doS attacks as a function of key performance parameters such as mobility, system size, node density, and counter-DoS strategy.
Abstract: Significant progress has been made towards making ad hoc networks secure and DoS resilient. However, little attention has been focused on quantifying DoS resilience: Do ad hoc networks have sufficiently redundant paths and counter-DoS mechanisms to make DoS attacks largely ineffective? Or are there attack and system factors that can lead to devastating effects? In this paper, we design and study DoS attacks in order to assess the damage that difficult-to-detect attackers can cause. The first attack we study, called the JellyFish attack, is targeted against closed-loop flows such as TCP; although protocol compliant, it has devastating effects. The second is the Black Hole attack, which has effects similar to the JellyFish, but on open-loop flows. We quantify via simulations and analytical modeling the scalability of DoS attacks as a function of key performance parameters such as mobility, system size, node density, and counter-DoS strategy. One perhaps surprising result is that such DoS attacks can increase the capacity of ad hoc networks, as they starve multi-hop flows and only allow one-hop communication, a capacity-maximizing, yet clearly undesirable situation.

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Aug 2004
TL;DR: The model incorporates incentives for users to act as transit nodes on multi-hop paths and to be rewarded with their own ability to send traffic and illustrates the way in which network resources are allocated to users according to their geographical position.
Abstract: This paper explores a model for the operation of an ad hoc mobile network. The model incorporates incentives for users to act as transit nodes on multi-hop paths and to be rewarded with their own ability to send traffic. The paper explores consequences of the model by means of fluid-level simulations of a network and illustrates the way in which network resources are allocated to users according to their geographical position.

01 Jan 2004
TL;DR: It is advocated from the perspective that ad hoc routing protocols and group communication primitives migrated from wired networks might not be an efficient way to support the envisioned applications, and that new coordination algorithms directly based on MAC could be designed for this purpose.
Abstract: As a component of the intelligent transportation system (ITS) and one of the concrete applications of mobile ad hoc networks, inter-vehicle communication (IVC) has attracted research attention from both the academia and industry of, notably, US, EU, and Japan. The most important feature of IVC is its ability to extend the horizon of drivers and on-board devices (e.g., radar or sensors) and, thus, to improve road traffic safety and efficiency. This paper surveys IVC with respect to key enabling technologies ranging from physical radio frequency to group communication primitives and security issues. The mobility models used to evaluate the feasibility of these technologies are also briefly described. We focus on the discussion of various MAC protocols that seem to be indispensable components in the network protocol stack of IVC. By analyzing the application requirements and the protocols built upon the MAC layer to meet these requirements, we also advocate our perspective that ad hoc routing protocols and group communication primitives migrated from wired networks might not be an efficient way to support the envisioned applications, and that new coordination algorithms directly based on MAC could be designed for this purpose.

Journal Article
TL;DR: Insight is provided into the potential applications of ad hoc networks and the technological challenges that protocol designers and network developers are faced with, which include routing, service and resource discovery, Internet connectivity, billing and security.
Abstract: In the past few years, we have seen a rapid expansion in the field of mobile computing due to the proliferation of inexpensive, widely available wireless devices. However, current devices, applications and protocols are solely focused on cellular or wireless local area networks (WLANs), not taking into account the great potential offered by mobile ad hoc networking. A mobile ad hoc network is an autonomous collection of mobile devices (laptops, smart phones, sensors, etc.) that communicate with each other over wireless links and cooperate in a distributed manner in order to provide the necessary network functionality in the absence of a fixed infrastructure. This type of network, operating as a stand-alone network or with one or multiple points of attachment to cellular networks or the Internet, paves the way for numerous new and exciting applications. Application scenarios include, but are not limited to: emergency and rescue operations, conference or campus settings, car networks, personal networking, etc. This paper provides insight into the potential applications of ad hoc networks and discusses the technological challenges that protocol designers and network developers are faced with. These challenges include routing, service and resource discovery, Internet connectivity, billing and security.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
07 Mar 2004
TL;DR: This work introduces a new model for evaluating the load balance under multi-path routing, when the paths chosen are the first K shortest paths (for a pre-specified K) and shows that unless the authors use a very large number of paths, the load distribution is almost the same as single shortest path routing.
Abstract: Multi-path routing has been studied thoroughly in the context of wired networks. Ii has been shown that using multiple paths to route messages between any source-destination pair of nodes (instead of using a single path) balances the load more evenly throughout the network. The common belief is that the same is true for ad hoc networks, i.e., multi-path routing balances the load significantly better than single-path routing. We show that this is not necessarily the case. We introduce a new model for evaluating the load balance under multi-path routing, when the paths chosen are the first K shortest paths (for a pre-specified K). Using this model, we show that unless we use a very large number of paths (which is very costly and therefore infeasible) the load distribution is almost the same as single shortest path routing. This is in contrary to the previous existing results which assume that multi-path routing distributes the load uniformly.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article surveys methods used to infer locations in a multihop fashion in networks with or without the mentioned capabilities.
Abstract: Position and orientation of individual nodes in ad hoc sensor networks are useful for both service and application implementation. Services that can be enabled by availability of position include routing and querying. At application level, position is required in order to label the reported data in a sensor network, whereas position and orientation enable tracking. Nodes may have local capabilities such as the possibility of measuring ranges to neighbors, angle of arrival, or global capabilities, such as GPS and digital compasses. This article surveys methods used to infer locations in a multihop fashion in networks with or without the mentioned capabilities.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article survey, classify, and analyze 34 MAC layer protocols for wireless ad hoc networks, ranging from industry standards to research proposals, to characterize and classify the protocols, to analyze the tradeoffs produced by different design decisions, and to assess the suitability of various design combinations for ad hoc network applications.
Abstract: Recent technological advances in wireless communications offer new opportunities and challenges for wireless ad hoc networking. In the absence of the fixed infrastructure that characterizes traditional wireless networks, control and management of wireless ad hoc networks must be distributed across the nodes, thus requiring carefully designed medium access control (MAC) layer protocols. In this article we survey, classify, and analyze 34 MAC layer protocols for wireless ad hoc networks, ranging from industry standards to research proposals. Through this analysis, six key features emerge: (1) channel separation and access; (2) topology; (3) power; (4) transmission initiation; (5) traffic load and scalability; and (6) range. These features allow us to characterize and classify the protocols, to analyze the tradeoffs produced by different design decisions, and to assess the suitability of various design combinations for ad hoc network applications. The classification and the tradeoff analysis yield design guidelines for future wireless ad hoc network MAC layer protocols.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
05 Apr 2004
TL;DR: This paper proposes a distributed key management and authentication approach by deploying the recently developed concepts of identity-based cryptography and threshold secret sharing, which effectively solves the problem of single point of failure in the traditional public key infrastructure (PKI)-supported system.
Abstract: As various applications of wireless ad hoc network have been proposed, security has become one of the big research challenges and is receiving increasing attention. In this paper, we propose a distributed key management and authentication approach by deploying the recently developed concepts of identity-based cryptography and threshold secret sharing. Without any assumption of prefixed trust relationship between nodes, the ad hoc network works in a self-organizing way to provide the key generation and key management service, which effectively solves the problem of single point of failure in the traditional public key infrastructure (PKI)-supported system. The identity-based cryptography mechanism is applied here not only to provide end-to-end authenticity and confidentiality, but also to save network bandwidth and computational power of wireless nodes.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
19 Apr 2004
TL;DR: A comparison of MANETs and sensor networks reveals the important features that need to be taken into consideration while designing and evaluating new routing protocols for sensor networks.
Abstract: Sensor networks are emerging as a new tool for habitat monitoring in nature reserves, monitoring and gathering events in hazardous environments, surveillance of buildings, and surveillance of enemy activities in a battlefield environment. Nodes in a sensor network are severely constrained by energy, storage capacity and computing power. To prolong the lifetime of the sensor nodes, designing efficient routing protocols is critical. Even though sensor networks are primarily designed for monitoring and reporting events, since they are application dependent, a single routing protocol cannot be efficient for sensor networks across all applications. We first analyze the requirements and similarities of MANETs (mobile ad hoc networks) and sensor networks. Then, we describe the existing routing protocols for sensor networks and present a critical analysis of these protocols. Finally, we compare and contrast these protocols. This comparison reveals the important features that need to be taken into consideration while designing and evaluating new routing protocols for sensor networks.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is shown how the modeling of time-changes unsettles old questions and allows for new insights into central problems in networking, such as routing metrics, connectivity, and spanning trees.
Abstract: Wireless technologies and the deployment of mobile and nomadic services are driving the emergence of complex ad hoc networks that have a highly dynamic behavior. Modeling such dynamics and creating a reference model on which results could be compared and reproduced, was stated as a fundamental issue by a recent NSF workshop on networking. In this article we show how the modeling of time-changes unsettles old questions and allows for new insights into central problems in networking, such as routing metrics, connectivity, and spanning trees. Such modeling is made possible through evolving graphs, a simple combinatorial model that helps capture the behavior or dynamic networks over time.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
05 Oct 2004
TL;DR: This work presents a leader election algorithm that is highly adaptive to arbitrary (possibly concurrent) topological changes and is therefore well-suited for use in mobile ad hoc networks and shows that each node has a leader approximately 97-99% of the time in a variety of operating conditions.
Abstract: Leader election is a very important problem, not only in wired networks, but in mobile, ad hoc networks as well. Existing solutions to leader election do not handle frequent topology changes and dynamic nature of mobile networks. We present a leader election algorithm that is highly adaptive to arbitrary (possibly concurrent) topological changes and is therefore well-suited for use in mobile ad hoc networks. The algorithm is based on finding an extrema and uses diffusing computations for this purpose. We show, using linear-time temporal logic, that the algorithm is "weakly" self-stabilizing and terminating. We also simulate the algorithm in a mobile ad hoc setting. Through our simulation study, we elaborate on several important issues that can significantly impact performance of such a protocol for mobile ad hoc networks such as choice of signaling, broadcast nature of wireless medium etc. Our simulation study shows that our algorithm is quite effective in that each node has a leader approximately 97-99% of the time in a variety of operating conditions.