A New Matching Algorithm for Managing Location Information in Mobile Computing

We describe a fully distributed algorithm for location management. It is based on organizing mobile switching stations into a hierarchical network of grids. The interesting properties of this algorithm are symmetric availability for reads and writes, low quorum size, scalability and flexibility. The algorithm is based on a novel solution for the well-known matching problem that is especially suitable in a mobile environment. We compare the performance of our technique against the standard grid protocol and also the more recent Crumbling Walls protocol in terms of read and write availability, quorum size and load. The results and analysis highlight the tradeoffs involved in these various protocols, and show that the proposed algorithm is promising.