Patent ID: 7719988

Claim:
A method for controlling an ad hoc network, comprising the steps of: providing an ad hoc node of a mobile ad hoc multihop network, communicating with a plurality of mobile remote ad hoc nodes, using a mobility-aware mesh construction algorithm employing a heuristic to approximate minimal data overhead forwarding meshes, said heuristic being based on an epidemic propagation of a number of forwarding nodes during creation of multicast paths, to provide the ad hoc node with information for selection between alternate paths, each path characterized by a path length and a data-overhead; and automatically adapting the mobility-aware mesh construction algorithm based on a probabilistic path selection function, such that paths having a low data-overhead are more probably selected with an increase in a reliability of the multihop mesh network, and paths having a short path length are less probably selected with an increase in a reliability of the multihop mesh network, the reliability being predicted based on at least a number of available paths under current mobility conditions of the network, wherein a probability factor in determining a selection of a path is approximately, π ⁡ ( ld ,  S  ) = 1 1 +  S 2  × ( 1 + e - α ⁢ □ ⁢ ld ) wherein π(ld,|S|) represents a probability π of selection of a path in dependent on a link duration statistic ld, |S| is a number of multicast sources, and α is a normalization factor.