Token Traversal Strategies of a Distributed Spanning Forest Algorithm in Delay Tolerant MANETs

This paper presents several distributed and decentralized strategies used for token traversal in spanning forest over DTMs. DTMs or Delay Tolerant Mobile ad hoc networks are characterized by some undesirable behaviors like the disappearance of mobile devices, connection disruptions, network partitioning, etc. Providing efficient communications in DTMs is a very challenging issue. Techniques based on tree topology are well known for increasing the efficiency of network protocols and/or applications. One of the main features of the tree based topologies is the existence of a token traversing in every tree. The traversal of this token through a tree has a high impact on its characteristics, such as the topology of the constructed tree and the performance (quality of service) it can provide. The efficiency of communications relies on the availability of the spanning tree topology. In this sense, a complete tree structure over a network is desired. Furthermore, the convergence speed rate used in constructing this tree is important.