On mobility handling of sub-optimal timer-based CDS construction

Connected dominating sets (CDSs) can be used as virtual backbones in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) to simplify the design of network primitives and improve their performance. An ideal CDS protocol for MANETs should create a small CDS and adapt to nodal mobility. Unfortunately, none of the CDS protocols capable of mobility handling have been shown to create a sub-optimal CDS in the past. In this paper, we first prove that our timer-based CDS protocols create a CDS with a sub-optimal size. Although the approximation factors of our timer-based protocols are not the best known result, our protocols can easily accommodate nodal mobility. In addition, we propose the Extended Mobility Handling (EMH) procedures for timer-based CDS protocols to further enhance CDS maintenance in MANETs. Simulation results show that our protocols incorporating EMH successfully prolong the CDS service time while maintaining a competitive size of CDS in MANETs.