Distributed broadcast scheduling in mobile ad hoc networks

Data and control messages broadcasting is a widely used mechanism in network applications and protocols, which can have latency requirements for the information delivery. One solution to achieve low latencies is to solve the Minimum-Latency Broadcast Scheduling (MLBS) problem. However, MLBS is a NP-Complete problem, thus some works propose approximation algorithms. This paper presents simulation results of well-known flood control mechanisms over IEEE 802.11 scheduling (CSMA/CA), which show that simple heuristics can provide acceptable latencies. Thus, a distributed scheduling mechanism that requires only partial topology knowledge is proposed and evaluated when combined with flood control mechanisms on CSMA/CA and TDMA networks. Results show the good performance of the proposal compared to theoretical limits of centralized algorithms.