Scalability of mobile ad hoc networks

This chapter addresses scalability aspects of mobile ad hoc networks management and clusters built on top of them. Mobile ad hoc networks are created by mobile devices without the help of any infrastructure for the purpose of communication and service sharing. As a key supporting service, the management of mobile ad hoc networks is identified as an important aspect of their exploitation. Obviously, management must be simple, effective, consume least of resources, reliable and scalable. The first section of this chapter discusses different incarnations of the management service of mobile ad hoc networks considering the above mentioned characteristics. Cluster computing is an interesting computing paradigm that, by aggregation of network hosts, provides more resources than available on each of them. Clustering mobile and heterogeneous devices is not an easy task as it is proven in the second part of the chapter. Both sections include innovative solutions for the management and clustering of mobile ad hoc networks, proposed by the authors.