Abstract
International audience; Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are self-organized and dynamically reconfigurable wireless networks. It is a promising technology for emergency deployment scenarios where communication systems should be highly reliable and able to operate in potentially adverse environments. However, MANETs experience severe impairments because of node motion or scarce node density. Satellite communications may help in this respect by setting up recovery links. In this article, we study the problem of selecting MANET nodes that will provide access to the satellite capacity (i.e gateway nodes). A key challenge is that nodes are mobile resulting in topology changes and network partitioning. We address this challenge by extending the use of the clustering techniques initially designed to solve scalability issues in MANETs. In our proposed architecture, the roles of clusterhead and gateway are merged. Our approach contrasts with prior work in that the gateway role assignment is performed in a distributed and mobile environment. Through network dynamic analysis, we investigate the suitability of our novel approach for solving the gateway placement problem.