On the construction of energy-efficient broadcast and multicast trees in wireless networks

TLDR

The wireless networking environment presents formidable challenges to the study of broadcasting and multicasting problems. The study introduces and evaluates algorithms for constructing energy‑efficient broadcast and multicast trees in infrastructureless, all‑wireless networks, developing a broadcast incremental power algorithm and its multicast adaptation. The authors propose a broadcast incremental power algorithm, adapted for multicast, that exploits the broadcast nature of wireless communication and is evaluated using an energy‑efficiency metric. The algorithm outperforms link‑based wired‑network algorithms in terms of energy efficiency.

Abstract

The wireless networking environment presents formidable challenges to the study of broadcasting and multicasting problems. After addressing the characteristics of wireless networks that distinguish them from wired networks, we introduce and evaluate algorithms for tree construction in infrastructureless, all-wireless applications. The performance metric used to evaluate broadcast and multicast trees is energy-efficiency. We develop the broadcast incremental power algorithm, and adapt it to multicast operation as well. This algorithm exploits the broadcast nature of the wireless communication environment, and addresses the need for energy-efficient operation. We demonstrate that our algorithm provides better performance than algorithms that have been developed for the link-based, wired environment.