Network wide broadcasting in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks provides important control and route establishment functionality for a number of unicast and multicast protocols. Considering its wide use as a building block for other network layer protocols, the MANET community needs to standardize a single methodology that efficiently delivers a packet from one node to all other network nodes. Despite a considerable number of proposed broadcasting schemes, no comprehensive comparative analysis has been previously done. This paper provides such analysis by classifying existing broadcasting schemes into categories and simulating a subset of each category, thus supplying a condensed but comprehensive side by side comparison. The simulations are designed to pinpoint, in each category, specific failures to network conditions that are relevant to MANETs, e.g., bandwidth congestion and dynamic topologies. In addition, protocol extensions using adaptive responses to network conditions are proposed, implemented and analyzed for one broadcasting scheme that performs well in the comparative study.

In this paper we discuss the mechanism of multipoint relays (MPRs) to efficiently do the flooding of broadcast messages in the mobile wireless networks. Multipoint relaying is a technique to reduce the number of redundant re-transmissions while diffusing a broadcast message in the network. We discuss the principle and the functioning of MPRs, and propose a heuristic to select these MPRs in a mobile wireless environment. We also analyze the complexity of this heuristic and prove that the computation of a multipoint relay set with minimal size is NP-complete. Finally, we present some simulation results to show the efficiency of multipoint relays.

AbstractÐIn a multihop wireless network, each node has a transmission radius and is able to send a message to all of its neighbors that are located within the radius. In a broadcasting task, a source node sends the same message to all the nodes in the network. In this paper, we propose to significantly reduce or eliminate the communication overhead of a broadcasting task by applying the concept of localized dominating sets. Their maintenance does not require any communication overhead in addition to maintaining positions of neighboring nodes. Retransmissions by only internal nodes in a dominating set is sufficient for reliable broadcasting. Existing dominating sets are improved by using node degrees instead of their ids as primary keys. We also propose to eliminate neighbors that already received the message and rebroadcast only if the list of neighbors that might need the message is nonempty. A retransmission after negative acknowledgements scheme is also described. The important features of proposed algorithms are their reliability �reaching all nodes in the absence of message collisions), significant rebroadcast savings, and their localized and parameterless behavior. The reduction in communication overhead for broadcasting task is measured experimentally. Dominating sets based broadcasting, enhanced by neighbor elimination scheme and highest degree key, provides reliable broadcast with 53 percent of node retransmissions �on random unit graphs with 100 nodes) for all average degrees d. Critical d is around 4, with 48 percent for 3, 40 percent for d 10, and 20 percent for d 25. The proposed methods are better than existing ones in all considered aspects: reliability, rebroadcast savings, and maintenance communication overhead. In particular, the cluster structure is inefficient for broadcasting because of considerable communication overhead for maintaining the structure and is also inferior in terms of rebroadcast savings. Index TermsÐBroadcasting, wireless networks, distributed algorithms, dominating sets, clustering. 1

Although far from optimal, flooding is an indispensable message dissemination technique for network-wide broadcast within mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). As such, the plain flooding algorithm provokes a high number of unnecessary packet rebroadcasts, causing contention, packet collisions and ultimately wasting precious limited bandwidth. Studies have been undertaken to optimize flooding using a deterministic approach. Because of the highly dynamic and mobile characteristics of MANETs, probabilistic algorithms may be better suited. We explore the phase transition phenomenon observed in percolation theory and random graphs as a basis for defining probabilistic flooding algorithms. We consider models with and without packet collisions to better understand when phase transition occurs. We show through simulation that in cases of no collision control, probabilistic flooding greatly enhances network performance while significantly reducing broadcast packets in dense networks, although phase transition is not observed.

Unlike in a wired network, a packet transmitted by a node in an ad hoc wireless network can reach all neighbors. Therefore, the total number of transmissions (forward nodes) is generally used as the cost criterion for broadcasting. The problem of finding the minimum number of forward nodes is NPcomplete. Among various approximation approaches, dominant pruning [7] utilizes 2-hop neighborhood information to reduce redundant transmissions. In this paper, we analyze some deficiencies of the dominant pruning algorithm and propose two better approximation algorithms: total dominant pruning and partial dominant pruning. Both algorithms utilize 2-hop neighborhood information more effectively to reduce redundant transmissions. Simulation results of applying these two algorithms show performance improvements compared with the original dominant pruning. In addition, two termination criteria are discussed and compared through simulation.

AbstractÐIn a localized routing algorithm, each node makes forwarding decisions solely based on the position of itself, its neighbors, and its destination. In distance, progress, and direction-based approaches (reported in the literature), when node A wants to send or forward message m to destination node D, it forwards m to its neighbor C which is closest to D (has best progress toward D, whose direction is closest to the direction of D, respectively) among all neighbors of A. The same procedure is repeated until D, if possible, is eventually reached. The algorithms are referred to as GEDIR, MFR, and DIR when a common failure criterion is introduced: The algorithm stops if the best choice for the current node is the node from which the message came. We propose 2-hop GEDIR, DIR, and MFR methods in which node A selects the best candidate node C among its 1-hop and 2-hop neighbors according to the corresponding criterion and forwards m to its best 1-hop neighbor among joint neighbors of A and C. We then propose flooding GEDIR and MFR and hybrid single-path/flooding GEDIR and MFR methods which are the first localized algorithms (other than full flooding) to guarantee the message delivery (in a collision-free environment). We show that the directional routing methods are not loopfree, while the GEDIR and MFR-based methods are inherently loop free. The simulation experiments, with static random graphs, show that GEDIR and MFR have similar success rates, which is low for low degree graphs and high for high degree ones. When successful, their hop counts are near the performance of the shortest path algorithm. Hybrid single-path/flooding GEDIR and MFR methods have low communication overheads. The results are also confirmed by experiments with moving nodes and MAC layer. Index TermsÐRouting, wireless networks, distributed algorithms, shortest path, broadcasting 1

In the minimum energy broadcasting problem, each node can adjust its transmission power in order to minimize total energy consumption but still enable a message originated from a source node to reach all the other nodes in an ad-hoc wireless network. In all existing solutions each node requires global network information (including distances between any two neighboring nodes in the network) in order to decide its own transmission radius. In this paper, we describe a new localized protocol where each node requires only the knowledge of its distance to all neighboring nodes and distances between its neighboring nodes (or, alternatively, geographic position of itself and its neighboring nodes). In addition to using only local information, our protocol is shown experimentally to be comparable to the best known globalized BIP solution. Our solutions are based on the use of relative neighborhood graph which preserves connectivity and is defined in localized manner. I.

We propose a general framework for broadcasting in ad hoc networks through self-pruning. The approach is based on selecting a small subset of hosts (also called nodes) to form a forward node set to carry out a broadcast process. Each node, upon receiving a broadcast packet, determines whether to forward the packet based on two neighborhood coverage conditions proposed in this paper. These coverage conditions depend on neighbor connectivity and history of visited nodes, and in general, resort to global network information. Using local information such as k-hop neighborhood information, the forward node set is selected through a distributed and local pruning process. The forward node set can be constructed and maintained through either a proactive process (i.e., “up-to-date”) or a reactive process (i.e., “on-the-fly”). Several existing broadcast algorithms can be viewed as special cases of the coverage conditions with k-hop neighborhood information. Simulation results show that new algorithms, which are more efficient than existing ones, can be derived from the coverage conditions, and self-pruning based on 2- or 3-hop neighborhood information is relatively cost-effective.

In a multihop wireless network, each node has a transmission radius and is able to send a message to one of its neighbors (one-to-one) or all of its neighbors (one-to-all) that are located within the radius. In a broadcasting task, a source node needs to send the same message to all the nodes in the network. In this paper, we propose to reduce the communication overhead of broadcasting algorithm for one-to-one model by applying the concepts of planar graphs such as RNG (relative neighborhood graphs) and connected dominating sets determined by internal nodes. Regular message exchanges between neighbors, which include location updates or signal strengths, suffice to maintain these structures, and they therefore do not impose additional communication overhead. In internal node based broadcasting, messages are forwarded on the edges that connect two internal nodes, and on edges that connect each non-internal node with its closest internal node. A neighbor elimination scheme is added to the...

Recent availability of small inexpensive low power GPS receivers and techniques for finding relative coordinates based on signal strengths, and the need for the design of power efficient and scalable networks, provided justification for applying position based routing methods in ad hoc networks. A number of such algorithms were developed in last few years, in addition to few basic methods proposed about fifteen years ago. This article surveys known routing methods, and provides their taxonomy in terms of a number of characteristics: loop-free behavior, distributed operation (localized, global or zonal), path strategy (single path, multi-path or flooding based), metrics used (hop count, power or cost), memorization (memoryless or memorizing past traffic), guaranteed delivery, scalability, and robustness (strategies to handle the position deviation due to the dynamicity of the network). We also briefly discuss relevant issues such as physical requirements, experimental design, location updates, QoS, congestion, scheduling node activity, topology construction, broadcasting and network capacity.