Waking up anonymous ad hoc radio networks

Abstract

We consider the task of waking up an anonymous ad hoc radio network from a single source, by a deterministic algorithm. In the beginning only the source is awake and has to wake up other nodes by disseminating messages throughout the network. Nodes of the network do not know its topology and they do not have distinct labels. In such networks some nodes are impossible to reach. A node in a network is accessible if it can be woken up by some (possibly network-dependent) deterministic algorithm. A deterministic wakeup algorithm for ad hoc networks is universal if it wakes up all accessible nodes in all networks. We study the question of the existence of such a universal wakeup algorithm. For synchronous communication we design a universal wakeup algorithm, and for asynchronous communication we show that no such algorithm exists. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.