CRUST: Implementation of clustering and routing functions for mobile ad hoc networks using reactive tuple-spaces

This work builds on the LIME (Linda in mobile environment) tuple space framework to implement a system that offers clustering and routing capabilities for mobile ad hoc network (MANET) environments, and provide an agent-like architecture for running distributed and collaborative applications on mobile devices. This paper describes the components that were added to the LIME system, which were necessary to implement engagement and disengagement of hosts into and out of spaces, and illustrates the developed engagement mechanism and routing protocol with the aid of example scenarios. The paper then discusses the system performance obtained from implementing its functions using the ns-2 network simulation software. The obtained results indicate that the system works reasonably well under different conditions (host transmission range, host mobility, and density of hosts in the network). For instance, the time for a host to join a space is well under one second in sparse spaces and goes up to only two seconds in moderately dense spaces). Moreover, the system offers routing performance that is moderately better than that of ZRP, both in terms of route discovery delay and generated traffic.