A Taxonomy of Location Management in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Location management is difficult in ad hoc networks due to many features such as the lack of a wired infrastructure, the scarce energy, memory and processing capabilities of nodes, and nodes' movement which leads to a dynamic topology. These characteristics make the location management schemes designed for mobile cellular networks inefficient for ad hoc networks. New solutions for location management have therefore been proposed in the literature in the recent past. In this paper, a taxonomy of location management strategies is presented; some of the more interesting approaches proposed in the literature are critically discussed, highlighting their advantages and disadvantages.