Towards Optimal Broadcast in Wireless Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new broadcasting algorithm for wireless mobile ad hoc networks that achieves near-optimal performance even with dynamic topologies and packet loss, improving efficiency over existing schemes.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel broadcast algorithm tailored for dynamic MANET environments, approaching theoretical performance bounds under realistic conditions.

Findings

Algorithm performs close to theoretical bounds

Effective in high-mobility scenarios

Robust against packet loss and collisions

Abstract

Broadcast is a fundamental operation in networks, especially in wireless Mobile Ad Hoc NETworks (MANET). For example, some form of broadcasting is used by all on-demand MANET routing protocols, when there is uncertainty as to the location of the destination node, or for service discovery. Being such a basic operation of the networking protocols, the importance of efficient broadcasting has long been recognized by the networking community. Numerous papers proposed increasingly more efficient implementation of broadcasting, while other studies presented bounds on broadcast performance. In this work, we present a new approach to efficient broadcast in networks with dynamic topologies, such as MANET, and we introduce a new broadcasting algorithm for such networking environments. We evaluate our algorithm, showing that its performance comes remarkably close to the corresponding theoretical performance bounds, even in the presence of packet loss due to, for example, MAC-layer collisions. Furthermore, we compare the performance of the proposed algorithm with other recently proposed schemes, including in various mobility settings.