Minimizing Broadcast Latency and Redundancy in Ad Hoc Networks

Network wide broadcasting is a fundamental operation in ad hoc networks. In broadcasting, a source node sends a message to all the other nodes in the network. In this paper, we consider the problem of collision-free broadcasting in ad hoc networks. Our objective is to minimize the latency and the number of transmissions in the broadcast. We show that minimum latency broadcasting is NP-complete for ad hoc networks. We also present a simple distributed collision-free broadcasting algorithm for broadcasting a message. For networks with bounded node transmission ranges, our algorithm simultaneously guarantees that the latency and the number of transmissions are within $O(1)$ times their respective optimal values. Our algorithm and analysis extend to the case when multiple messages are broadcast from multiple sources. Experimental studies indicate that our algorithms perform much better in practice than the analytical guarantees provided for the worst case.