Patent ID: 7532585

Claim:
A method of electing a leader node in an ad-hoc network comprising a plurality of nodes, the method comprising: transmitting node solicitation (NS) messages and calculating distances between the plurality of nodes using information included in the NS messages transmitted from the plurality of nodes; determining whether the plurality of nodes are candidate leaders by calculating position values of each node based on the distances calculated by each node; electing the leader node based on information included in leader election option messages transmitted by each of the candidate leaders; periodically transmitting a hello message indicating that the elected leader node is the leader node; determining whether each node neighboring the leader node receives a hello message from the leader node; determining whether each neighboring node qualifies as candidate leader if each neighboring node does not receive the hello message; transmitting a leader election option message from each neighboring node which qualifies as candidate leader and electing the leader node if at least one neighboring node is determined to be the candidate leader, wherein no leader election option message is transmitted if no neighboring node qualifies as candidate leader; and wherein each node that is not candidate leader determines whether the leader election option message is received from other nodes for a predetermined period of time; and determining each neighboring node to be qualified as candidate leader after the predetermined period of time has elapsed and electing the leader node among candidate leaders.