A novel location-service protocol based on k-hop clustering for mobile ad hoc networks

This paper presents a novel k-hop cluster-based location service (KCLS) protocol in mobile ad hoc networks, which is able to well balance the tradeoff between the communication overheads and the accuracy of location information. Other advantages of the proposed KCLS protocol include excellent network scalability and tolerance of link breakage that can significantly reduce communication overheads and the latency caused by route path recovery. The numerical results obtained from both theoretical analysis and simulations have shown that the cost of location management using the KCLS protocol is less than 2% of the location-management cost using the link-state protocol. Especially for a large value of k, the proposed KCLS protocol is not only able to suppress the increasing rate of the total cost when the number of hosts in the network increases but also increases the hit probability of location service and reduces the passive effect of host mobility on control overhead as well. With good scalability and the capability of self-discovery, the proposed KCLS protocol is adaptable to accommodate most applications in ad hoc networks.