On the Fundamental Limits of Broadcasting in Wireless Mobile Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the fundamental properties of broadcasting in mobile wireless networks. In particular, we characterize broadcast capacity and latency of a mobile network, subject to the condition that the stationary node spatial distribution generated by the mobility model is uniform. We first study the intrinsic properties of broadcasting, and present a broadcasting scheme that simultaneously achieves asymptotically optimal broadcast capacity and latency, subject to a weak upper bound on the maximum node velocity. We then investigate the broadcasting problem when the burden related to selecting relay nodes is taken into account, and present a combined distributed leader election and broadcasting scheme achieving a broadcast capacity and latency which is within a poly-logarithmic factor from optimal.