Minimizing Re-Transmissions (MRT) for Broadcast Traffic in Ad Hoc Wireless Networks

Abstract

Broadcasting is the process of sending a message from one node to all the other nodes in a network. Simple flooding is the simplest form of broadcasting in ad hoc wireless networks. Simple flooding provides important control, route discovery, and network information update functionality for unicast and multicast protocols. However, simple flooding generates too many broadcast message duplications in ad hoc wireless networks. Minimum spanning tree (MST)-based flooding has traditionally been used in networks to reduce the broadcast duplications by determining broadcast trees using global topology information. However, MST-based flooding still generates a lot of broadcast traffic duplications. In this paper, we propose an efficient type of flooding, called “minimizing re-transmissions” (MRT), to significantly reduce the broadcast duplications. The purpose of MRT is to minimize the number of retransmitting nodes in an ad hoc wireless network based on the network's link state information. This advantage of minimizing the number of retransmitting nodes significantly reduces broadcast message duplications in ad hoc wireless networks. The performance of MRT is analyzed, evaluated, and compared to that of the simple flooding and the MST-based flooding. Simulations are conducted using the OMNet++ Simulator in order to validate the traffic performance analysis. For our sample network, analytical and simulation results show that MRT reduces broadcast message duplications by about 80% compared to simple flooding and by about 68% compared to MST-based flooding, thus saving a significant amount of network bandwidth and energy. MRT can be used in static or mobile ad hoc wireless networks and in wired networks to implement scalable broadcast communications.