An Adjusted Counter-Based Broadcast Scheme for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

Broadcasting is a fundamental and frequently usedoperation in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) wherea source node diffuses a message to all other nodes inthe networks. Flooding, the process in which eachnode retransmits every uniquely received packetexactly once is the simplest and most commonly usedmechanism for broadcasting in MANETs. Despite itssimplicity, it can result in high redundantretransmission, contention and collision, aphenomenon collectively referred to as the broadcaststorm problem, which can greatly increase thenetwork communication overhead. This paperproposes an adjusted counter-based scheme whichcombines the advantages of probability and counterbasedapproaches to mitigate this inherent problem.The scheme is simple, efficient and uses tworebroadcast probabilities to differentiate betweenmobile nodes in sparse and dense area as againstdropping the rebroadcast packet when a node is indense area. We evaluate the performance of ourscheme by comparing it against flooding, fixedprobability and counter-based schemes. Simulationresults reveal that our scheme achieves betterperformance in terms of saved rebroadcast, end-toenddelay and without sacrificing reachability.