Revisiting clustering based efficient broadcast for wireless multihop networks with memory limited nodes

Abstract

The easiest way to broadcast a message in a wireless multihop network is to let each network node retransmit the broadcast message once it has received it. That way however many unnecessary redundant transmissions take place. A large body of literature exists which copes with the problem to keep the number of retransmissions small. Solutions described so far either guarantee that all nodes in the network are reached but suffer from nodes with strict memory limitations, or can be applied on nodes with memory limitations but sacrifice delivery guarantees. In this work we look at a well known solution to reduce redundant broadcast transmissions: clustering nodes to form a connected network backbone where a broadcast limited on the backbone nodes still supplies all nodes in the network. We describe a new algorithm which guarantees that all network nodes are supplied by the cluster structure while the construction of the structure obeys strict memory limitations per node. We evaluate our solution in a log normal shadowing network simulation. Performance metrics considered are broadcast delay, delivery ratio, and flooding rate. For comparison we also consider simple flooding which requires just one storage location to memorize the currently handled broadcast task. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.