Elite leader finding algorithm for MANETs

The mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a hostile environment to design and implement computing algorithms. In MANETs, the coordinator election is the opening step to execute any service. Thus, the leader election is, de facto, prerequisite to various applications e.g., agreement, inter node communication, data exchange, serve the incoming request, key distribution, group communication, grant privileges, etc. The message propagation is costly affair as compared to computation. The MANET being bandwidth and power scarce, the development of message efficient protocols has been a preferred problem of research. Hence, in the contemporary literature, several protocols exist for leader election which focuses on reducing the number of algorithmic messages. The present article proposes a message efficient and failure resilient technique that improves leader availability. The proposed technique elects a vice-coordinator and a group of elite nodes as cabinet that avoids frequent leader election in the event of leader crash. Unlike, most of the contemporary leader election protocols, it avoids the broadcast of messages, to a large extent, and uses multicast and eventually unicast in leader election. The illustration also includes the simulated results and efficiency analysis of the proposed technique.