Scalable power-efficient broadcast over densely deployed wireless ad hoc networks

Wireless ad hoc or sensor networks usually operate over strictly or partially battery energy limited environments. To prolong the network operating time, energy-efficiency should be carefully considered at every layer of the network protocols and algorithms. Moreover, cross-layer effects and interactions have to be carefully analyzed and utilized. We consider the problem of constructing scalable power-efficient broadcast routing trees over densely deployed wireless ad hoc or sensor networks. The keys to resolving scalability issues are: (1) using a distributed implementation; (2) using a hierarchical approach; (3) using a (partially) shared routing tree structure. We achieve these by using, as a basic building block, the idea of a center-oriented broadcast (COBRA) scheme we presented earlier (Kang, I. and Poovendran, R., IEEE Wireless Commun. and Networking Conf., 2004).