Packet spreading without relaying in mobile wireless networks

Mobility is an intrinsic feature that shapes the wireless network nowadays. In this paper, we analyze the packet spreading time, another practical metric for evaluating mobile networks. We mainly focus on the non-relay-assisted information spreading scenario, in which only the source node broadcasts packets to its neighbors. Several single and multiple packet spreading protocols are proposed, and both closed-form expressions and scaling-law results are derived for their spreading times. It is observed that, while the traditional ACK-based multi-packet spreading protocols have to trade off between spreading time and feedback overhead, the broadcast-with-rateless-coding protocol excels in both, revealing its advantage particularly in spreading large-size files.