Broadcast based on layered diffusion in wireless ad hoc and sensor networks

Broadcast is a fundamental operation in wireless ad hoc and sensor networks. This paper proposes a simple and efficient broadcast protocol, called Broadcast based on Layered Diffusion (BLD), which is a stateless broadcast protocol with very low message overheads and very low computation requirements. In BLD, nodes do not need to exchange neighborhood information for building a broadcast backbone, but make their rebroadcast decisions locally. The design idea of BLD is to emulate the triangular tessellation for complete area coverage of the network field. It does not require nodes' location information for such tessellation emulation but only exploits the hop count information for each node to make local rebroadcast decision and timing. Simulation results show the effectiveness and efficiency of the BLD protocol and its robustness to localization errors and transmission errors. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.