Schedule Sequence Design for Broadcast in Multi-channel Ad Hoc Networks

TL;DR

This paper designs and analyzes schedule sequences for broadcast in multi-channel ad hoc networks, ensuring reliable communication despite asynchronous start times, and compares deterministic and probabilistic schemes through numerical evaluation.

Contribution

It introduces a method to construct schedule sequences with near-optimal period length for reliable broadcast in asynchronous multi-channel ad hoc networks.

Findings

Proposed sequence design achieves near lower bound on period length.

Compared deterministic and probabilistic schemes through numerical simulations.

Demonstrated effectiveness of schedule sequences in ensuring broadcast success.

Abstract

We consider a single-hop ad hoc network in which each node aims to broadcast packets to its neighboring nodes by using multiple slotted, TDD collision channels. There is no cooperation among the nodes. To ensure successful broadcast, we propose to pre-assign each node a periodic sequence to schedule transmissions and receptions at each time slot. These sequences are referred to as schedule sequences. Since each node starts its transmission schedule independently, there exist relative time offsets among the schedule sequences they use. Our objective is to design schedule sequences such that each node can transmit at least one packet to each of its neighbors successfully within a common period, no matter what the time offsets are. The sequence period should be designed as short as possible. In this paper, we analyze the lower bound on sequence period, and propose a sequence construction method by which the period can achieve the same order as the lower bound. We also consider the random scheme in which each node transmits or receives on a channel at each time slot with a pre-determined probability. The frame length and broadcast completion time under different schemes are compared by numerical studies.