Reducing Broadcast Redundancy in Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks with Implicit Coordination Among Forwarding Nodes

Abstract

Broadcasting is the process of sending a packet from a node to all other nodes in a network. In wireless ad-hoc networks, broadcasting might involve forwardings from intermediate nodes known as forwarding nodes because some nodes could be located physically far away from the source and are not covered by transmissions from the source. Without proper control, broadcasting in wireless ad-hoc networks could result in many redundant transmissions. Partial Dominant Pruning (PDP) is one of the most efficient broadcast schemes available for wireless ad-hoc networks. It uses neighbourhood information to reduce broadcast redundancy while ensuring packet reachability to all nodes in a network. During a selection process in PDP, the considered forwarding node selects its forwarding nodes independently. If it is made aware of other forwarding nodes of the same previous hop, a better decision could be made. In this paper, a novel broadcast scheme for wireless ad-hoc networks based on PDP is proposed. We show that it outperforms PDP while not introducing any additional overhead.