Asynchronous Message Logging Based Rollback Recovery in MANETs

The nodes in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are susceptible to various types of failures and therefore the protocols designed for these networks are required to be fault tolerant. Checkpointing and rollback recovery is a well explored fault tolerance technique for the static and cellular mobile distributed systems. However, it is not trivially applicable to MANETs due to their dynamic topology and constraints of limited resources such as wireless bandwidth and stable storage. The paper combines asynchronous message logging with independent checkpointing for a successful rollback recovery procedure adapted to the ad hoc environment. Logging the messages asynchronously significantly reduces the number of accesses to stable storage. The recovery procedure involves only those processes whose state depends on the state of the failed process. The presented scheme requires a low number of control messages, reduces the size of control information carried by application messages and can also handle the movement of nodes across the network.