Adaptive Gateway Discovery Mechanisms to Enhance Internet Connectivity for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

One of the key overhead components affecting the overall performance of hybrid ad hoc networks is the discovery and selection of Internet gateways. We develop an analytical model to evaluate existing proposals and we show that each of them is suited only for a limited range of network conditions. We propose and simulate two new adaptive gateway discovery algorithms (maximal source coverage and maximal benefit coverage) based on the dynamic adjustment of the scope of the gateway advertisement packets. Our results show that the adaptation capabilities of our proposed schemes allow them to outperform existing mechanisms over a variety of scenarios and mobility rates.