Patent ID: 7656851

Claim:
A method of exchanging information among nodes in a mobile ad hoc network (MANET), comprising: providing a controller or a processor at each node for performing operations to be carried out by or at the node; forming a number of logical domains in the network by periodically exchanging first topology update (TU 1 ) messages within one or more groups of neighboring nodes, each TU 1 message identifying (i) a node sending the TU 1 message, and (ii) certain other nodes within a range of one hop from the node sending the TU 1 message as a measure of node coverage of the sending node; determining, within each group of neighboring nodes, a node having an optimum node coverage among the nodes of each group, and designating the determined node as a domain lead (DL) node of the group; defining a domain as containing all nodes within a one hop range of the DL node; associating with each node of a given domain including the DL node, a set of one or more bridge nodes (BN) for linking each node with other nodes in neighboring domains by defining, at each node of the given domain, a first routing table for identifying other nodes that are in a range of one hop (H 1 nodes), periodically updating the H 1 nodes identified in the first routing table according to the TU 1 messages received at each node, and selecting, at each node, members of the set of bridge nodes from among H 1 nodes currently identified in the first routing table at each node, so that each member of which the set of bridge nodes has an optimal node coverage of a different neighboring domain, thereby enabling each node of the given domain to link with other nodes in the neighboring domains through its associated set of bridge nodes, the selection of which adapts to changes in network topology; and periodically originating domain topology update (TUd) messages from each of a number of DL nodes in the network, and forwarding the TUd messages through the set of bridge nodes associated with each DL node originating a TUd message, including identifying in each TUd message those nodes contained in the domain of the originating DL node, thereby disseminating network node topology information via an architecture defined by the DL nodes and the sets of bridge nodes associated with each of the DL nodes in the network.