Routing in Ad Hoc Networks Using a Spine

We present a two-level hierarchical routing architecture for ad hoc networks. Within each lower level cluster, we describe a self-organizing, dynamic spine structure to (a) propagate topology changes, (b) compute updated routes in the background, and (c) provide backup routes in case of transient failures of the primary routes. We analyze and bound the worst case of movements between upper level clusters to show that this hierarchical architecture scales well with network size.