Efficient implementations of all-to-all broadcasting in mobile ad hoc networks

In order to ease the challenging task of information dissemination in a MANET, we employ a legend: a data structure passed around a network to share information with all the mobile nodes. Our motivating application of the legend is sharing location information. Previous research shows that a simplistic legend performs better than other location services in the literature. To realize the full potential of legend-based location services, we propose three methods for the legend to traverse a network and compare their performance in simulation. Two of our proposed methods are novel, and the third is an improvement on an existing method. We also evaluate several general improvements to the traversal methods, and describe our way of making the legend transmission reliable. The result is a simple, lightweight location service that makes efficient use of network resources. Beyond using the legend as a location service, we discuss several implementation aspects of providing an efficient all-to-all broadcast operation, including legend reliability, preventing duplicate legends, using a legend in dynamic networks, and working with non-synchronized clocks. We also provide pseudocode for our legend traversal methods to aid implementation.