The dynamic counter-based broadcast for mobile ad hoc networks

Broadcasting is a fundamental operation in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) crucial to the successful deployment of MANETs in practice. Simple flooding is the most basic broadcasting technique where each node rebroadcasts any received packet exactly once. Although flooding is ideal for its simplicity and high reachability it has a critical disadvantage in that it tends to generate excessive collision and consumes the medium by unneeded and redundant packets. A number of broadcasting schemes have been proposed in MANETs to alleviate the drawbacks of flooding while maintaining a reasonable level of reachability. These schemes mainly fall into two categories: stochastic and deterministic. While the former employs a simple yet effective probabilistic principle to reduce redundant rebroadcasts the latter typically requires sophisticated control mechanisms to reduce excessive broadcast. The key danger with schemes that aim to reduce redundant broadcasts retransmissions is that they often do so at the expense of a reachability threshold which can be required in many applications. Among the proposed stochastic schemes, is counter-based broadcasting. In this scheme redundant broadcasts are inhibited by criteria related to the number of duplicate packets received. For this scheme to achieve optimal reachability, it requires fairly stable and known nodal distributions. However, in general, a MANETs‟ topology changes continuously and unpredictably over time. Though the counter-based scheme was among the earliest suggestions to reduce the problems associated with broadcasting, there have been few attempts to analyse in depth the performance of such an approach in MANETs. Accordingly, the first part of this research, Chapter 3, sets a baseline study of the counter-based scheme analysing it under various network operating conditions. The second part, Chapter 4, attempts to establish the claim that alleviating existing stochastic counter-based scheme by dynamically setting threshold values according to local neighbourhood density improves overall network efficiency. This is done through the implementation and analysis of the Dynamic Counter-Based (DCB) scheme, developed as part of this work. The study shows a clear benefit of the proposed scheme in terms of average collision rate, saved rebroadcasts and end-to-end delay, while maintaining reachability. The third part of this research, Chapter 5, evaluates dynamic counting and tests its performance in some approximately realistic scenarios. The examples chosen are from the rapidly developing field of Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs). The schemes are studied under metropolitan settings, involving nodes moving in streets and lanes with speed and direction constraints. Two models are considered and implemented: the first assuming an unobstructed open terrain; the other taking account of buildings and obstacles. While broadcasting is a vital operation in most MANET routing protocols, investigation of stochastic broadcast schemes for MANETs has tended to focus on the broadcast schemes, with little examination on the impact of those schemes in specific applications, such as route discovery in routing protocols. The fourth part of this research, Chapter 6, evaluates the performance of the Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol with a route discovery mechanism based on dynamic-counting. AODV was chosen as it is widely accepted by the research community and is standardised by the MANET IETF working group. That said, other routing protocols would be expected to interact in a similar manner. The performance of the AODV routing protocol is analysed under three broadcasting mechanisms, notably AODV with flooding, AODV with counting and AODV with dynamic counting. Results establish that a noticeable advantage, in most considered metrics can be achieved using dynamic counting with AODV compared to simple counting or traditional flooding. In summary, this research analysis the Dynamic Counter-Based scheme under a range of network operating conditions and applications; and demonstrates a clear benefit of the scheme when compared to its predecessors under a wide range of considered conditions