Hierarchical Autoconfiguration Scheme for IPv6-Based MANETs

Abstract

Assigning address to the nodes is a challenging task in MANETs due to the lack of infrastructure and dynamic topology. Even though the existing autoconfiguration schemes ensure unique identities or addresses to the nodes, these schemes fail to guarantee minimal protocol overhead and address acquisition delay. This paper proposes a hierarchical addressing scheme for IPv6-based MANETs that ensures unique addresses with minimal overhead and address acquisition delay. The scheme also uses an address reclamation mechanism that ensures the availability of free addresses to the newly entering nodes. The proposed scheme is implemented in NS-2 and compared with an existing scheme. The results conclude that the scheme outperforms the existing scheme with less address acquisition delay, protocol overhead and packet losses.