PERFORMANCE COMPARISON OF NEIGHBOR KNOWLEDGE BASED BROADCASTING ALGORITHMS IN AD HOC WIRELESS NETWORKS

Abstract

An ad hoc wireless network is a collection of wireless mobile hosts which form a network without the aid of established infrastructure or centralized administration. Broadcasting is the process in which one node sends a packet to all other nodes in the network. Unlike in a wired network, a packet transmitted by a node in an ad hoc wireless network can reach all neighbors. Therefore, the total number of transmissions is generally used as the cost criterion for broadcasting. In ad hoc wireless networks, flooding is used for broadcasting, but it generates many redundant transmissions. To limit the number of retransmissions, many neighbor knowledge based broadcasting algorithms have been proposed. These algorithms utilize neighborhood information to reduce redundant transmissions. In this dissertation, neighbor knowledge. based broadcasting algorithms have been compared, based on a simulation study. The aim of the dissertation is to compare neighbor knowledge based broadcasting algorithms such as self pruning, multipoint relaying, dominant pruning, total dominant pruning and partial dominant pruning in ad hoc wireless networks. A generalized simulation framework has been developed to study the performance of broadcasting algorithms. The performance indices used are average number of forward nodes, average number of packets received by a node and average broadcast latency. The simulation software is developed using C++ language on Microsoft Visual C++ environment and is tested on Microsoft Windows XP platform.