Multipoint relaying for flooding broadcast messages in mobile wireless networks

Abstract

We discuss the mechanism of multipoint relays (MPRs) to efficiently flood broadcast messages in mobile wireless networks. Multipoint relaying is a technique to reduce the number of redundant re-transmissions while diffusing a broadcast message in the network. We discuss the principle and the functioning of MPRs, and propose a heuristic to select these MPRs in a mobile wireless environment. We also analyze the complexity of this heuristic and prove that the computation of a multipoint relay set with minimal size is NP-complete. Finally, we present some simulation results to show the efficiency of multipoint relays.