A quorum-based mechanism as an enhancement to clock synchronization protocols for IEEE 802.11 MANETs

Abstract

In wireless mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), it is essential that all mobile hosts (MHs) are synchronized to a common clock to support the power-saving (PS) mechanism. Many protocols have been proposed for clock synchronization in IEEE 802.11 MANETs. However, it is practically impossible for any protocol to completely solve the asynchronism problem especially when connectivity is achieved by multi-hop communication or when a network could be temporarily disconnected. In this work, we propose a quorum-based mechanism, which includes a new structure of beacon intervals for MHs to detect potential asynchronous neighbors and an enhanced beacon transmission rule to assist clock synchronization protocols to discover asynchronous neighbors within bounded time. The proposed mechanism should be regarded as an enhancement to existing clock synchronization protocols. Our simulation results show that the mechanism can effectively relieve the clock asynchronism problem for IEEE 802.11 MANETs.