Improving the Performance of Broadcasting in Ad Hoc Wireless Networks

Abstract

Broadcasting is an often seen operation in wireless network environment. In an ad hoc wireless network, because of the mobility of each host, it is not an easy job for every mobile host to receive the broadcast message. Applications such as current time synchronization, paging, finding the route to particular destination, etc., all need to broadcast frequently. A simple broadcasting strategy is flooding. However, flooding leads to many redundant broadcasts and makes poor utilization of bandwidth. In this paper, we try to improve the performance of broadcasting in an ad hoc wireless network. We propose several methods to reduce the redundancy of rebroadcasting the same message and increase the reachability.