An efficient reliable one-hop broadcast in mobile ad hoc networks

A reliable one-hop broadcast is a fundamental communication primitive in mobile ad hoc networks in which a message from the source node is guaranteed to be delivered to all nodes within the source node’s transmission range. Despite the importance of it, reliable one-hop broadcast is not easy to accomplish due to collisions in wireless networks known as Hidden Terminal Problem. This paper presents a MAC protocol that not only guarantees reliable one-hop broadcast but also achieves it efficiently by exploring as many simultaneous executions of the communication as possible. In addition to the data packets, the proposed algorithm utilizes the control packets that prevent packet collisions, and at the same time, make the simultaneous communications possible to improve the network throughput. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.