Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are created by the mobile computing devices on an ad hoc basis without any support provided by a pre-installed communications infrastructure. Along with their appealing properties, MANETs exhibit properties that hinder their realization. Topology dynamism and bandwidth limitations adversely affect the performance of MANETs routing protocols. Virtual backbone is proposed to facilitate routing, broadcasting, and establishing a dynamic infrastructure for distributed location databases. Minimizing the virtual backbone size produces a simpler abstracted topology of...