Analytical model of the address auto-configuration protocol LHA in Ad hoc NEtworks

Address auto-configuration process is one of the most essential issues for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). Before nodes participate in multi-hops communication, they must be assigned an IP address. Fast assignment, uniqueness, conflicts solving and reuse ability of the IP addresses in MANETs are the main topics of the auto-configuration process. The Logical Hierarchical Addressing protocol (LHA) is designed to achieve fast address assignment and less protocol overhead. The contribution of this paper is to evaluate the performance of the LHA algorithm by developing an analytical model based on the actual number of hops required to obtain an IP address. The proposed analytical model is designed to predict the latency and signalling overhead. The numerical results show that the LHA protocol reduces the latency by 50% and overhead traffic to obtain an IP address by 75% compared to the Token-based protocol.