Abstract
In this paper, we propose a new architecture to solve the problem of mutual exclusion in mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). The architecture is composed of two layers: (i) a middleware layer that contains a token-based distributed mutual exclusion algorithm (DMEA) and (ii) a network layer that includes two routing forwarding strategies: one to route request messages and the other to route the token message. We also propose a request ordering policy that ensures the usual mutual exclusion properties and reduces the number of hops traversed per critical section (CS) access. The paper also addresses the problem of network partitioning and unreachable nodes. The proposed mutual exclusion algorithm is further enhanced to provide fault tolerance by preventing the loss of the token and generating a new token if the token loss event occurs. The performance complexity as well as the experimental results show that the proposed algorithm experiences low number of hops per CS access.