GLS : a Location Service for an Ad Hoc Network

The Grid Location Service (GLS) is a location service which provides location information for a node in a mobile ad hoc network. GLS provides a mechanism for a node to track the location of other nodes in the network topology. A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is an autonomous system of mobile routers (and associated hosts) connected by wireless links–the union of which form an arbitrary graph. The routers are free to move randomly and organize themselves arbitrarily; thus, the network’s wireless topology may change rapidly and unpredictably. Preliminary results indicate that GLS combined with geographic-based routing protocols looks like a promising scalable solution for very large MANETs. Since the results of GLS look promising, further study of GLS is warranted. Specifically, GLS needs to be compared with other location services and incorporated into a geographic-based routing protocol. In addition to providing an overview of the GLS protocol, this paper reports on our first step toward meeting these goals.