Broadcast in Wireless multi-hop Networks

Introduction

Broadcasting in the field of network communication usually means the distribution of messages/data to a number of recipients.

Why broadcasting?

Broadcasting is a common technique to realize many network issues such as

• paging,
• sending alarm signals,
• routing (e.g., DSR, ZRP, AODV),
• providing multicast in rapidly changing topologies.

Broadcasting by flooding

There are several ways to send a message from one host to all the other hosts. Broadcasting done by flooding is a simple and straight-forward approach to deal with this problem. Unfortunately, if flooding is done blindly, we could observe

• redundant rebroadcasts,
• heavy contention,
• collisions.

Many rebroadcasts are considered to be redundant, since the radio propagation is omnidirectional and a physical location may be covered by the transmission ranges of several hosts. As rebroadcasting hosts might be close to each other, heavy contention could exist. Collisions are more likely to occur because the timing of rebroadcasts is highly correlated.

We refer to these problems associated with flooding as the Broadcast Storm Problem. Reducing the possibility of redundant rebroadcasts and differentiating the timing of rebroadcasts are the two major ideas to alleviate this problem.