Topology control in ad hoc wireless networks with hitch-hiking

In this paper, we address the Topology Control with Hitch-hiking (TCH) problem. Hitch-hiking [1] is a novel model introduced recently that allows combining partial messages to decode a complete message. By effective use of partial signals, a specific topology can be obtained with less transmission power. The objective of the TCH problem is to obtain a strongly connected topology with minimum total energy consumption. We prove the TCH problem to be NP-complete and design a distributed and localized algorithm (DTCH) that can be applied on top of any symmetric, strongly-connected topology to reduce total power consumption. We analyze the performance of our approach through simulation.