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Mobile ad hoc networks do not have a fixed infrastructure and consist of mobile nodes that communicate over packet radios. Due to the nature of the fundamental applications of mobile ad hoc networks such as the military and rescue operations, efficient and timely cooperation between the nodes is of paramount importance. An efficient method to manage this difficult task would be the provision of some hierarchical mechanism and also another mechanism to provide communication between these hierarchical levels. Clustering is performed to simply partition the whole network into subnetworks to ease communication tasks. Backbone formation is the construction of the virtual path of cluster heads. In this book, we introduce a three layer architecture. At the lowest layer, the Merging Clustering Algorithm partitions the MANET into a number of balanced clusters periodically. At the second layer, the Backbone Formation Algorithm provides a virtual ring of cluster heads. Finally, an example resource management protocol which is a modified and scaled version of the Ricart-Agrawala algorithm implemented using the virtual ring structure is presented with the performance results.

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