Flow-Aware Broadcasting Algorithm

Broadcasting represents the foundation for communication and higher level application development in ad hoc and sensor networks. Designing broadcasting protocols is a challenging task, as they have to be simultaneously efficient and lightweight. However, broadcast algorithms tend to overlook the importance of the network topology, what may result in efficiency loss in heterogeneous node topologies, specially those where the retransmission of a few nodes is fundamental to ensure the broadcast propagation to large regions of the network. This paper proposes a novel broadcasting algorithm that favours the retransmission of the key nodes. Simulation results show that, in comparison with other approaches, the algorithm increases the delivery ratio without sacrificing device´s lifetime with an increase in the number of retransmissions.