A dynamic reconfiguration tolerant self-stabilizing token circulation algorithm in ad-hoc networks

Ad-hoc networks do not provide an infrastructure for communication such as routers and are characterized by 1) quick changes of communication topology and 2) unstable system behaviors. Self-stabilizing algorithms have been studied well to design stable distributed algorithms on unstable systems, but they are not requested to be adaptive to dynamic topology changes. We in this paper propose a new concept of dynamic reconfiguration tolerant (DRT for short) self-stabilizing algorithm, which is a self-stabilizing algorithm that is also robust against dynamic changes of topology. We next propose a DRT self-stabilizing token circulation algorithm. It deterministically circulates a token through a spanning tree edges in an asymptotically optimal time O(n), once the system is stabilized. The spanning tree will converge to the minimum spanning tree, if the network remains static.