A distributed hybrid algorithm for broadcasting through a virtual backbone in wireless ad hoc networks

Ad hoc networking is one of the enabling technologies for wireless pervasive computing. We study the issue of constructing an energy-efficient virtual backbone for broadcast communication in wireless ad hoc networks. When nodes use constant and identical transmission power, energy-efficient broadcasting amounts to minimizing the backbone size. Typically, algorithms for backbone construction rely on either adding nodes to the backbone, or pruning nodes from the backbone. We present a distributed hybrid algorithm in which a node is allowed to join the backbone as well as to prune itself from the backbone. In addition, a node may perform these two types of operations repeatedly, if necessary. We present numerical experiments in which we evaluate the performance of the distributed hybrid algorithm and several other algorithms. The experiments show that our algorithm performs well in terms of constructing a backbone of small size. Moreover, the number of times that the algorithm repeats its steps before converging to a stable backbone is small in relation to backbone size.