A Network Topology Awareness Based Probabilistic Broadcast Protocol for Data Transmission in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In recent years, mobile ad hoc networks are becoming more and more widely used because they do not rely on infrastructure, can be networked at any time and any place, and are low in cost. This paper proposes an effective broadcast protocol to transfer data in mobile ad hoc networks. The proposed protocol is a network topology awareness based probabilistic broadcast (NTAPB) protocol. It requires each node in the network to be configured with a unique ID. Every time a data packet broadcast from the source node is rebroadcast by another node, the ID of the rebroadcast node is recorded in the rebroadcast record table of the packet header. One packet is only allowed to be rebroadcast by the same node once. The network topology knowledge is dynamically awared by each node according to the information of source node and rebroadcast record table carried in the header of the received data packets. The protocol adopts different rebroadcast probability calculation strategies according to different network topologies. It distinguishes network topologies into two categories, fully connected and non-fully connected. For fully connected topologies, it uses a novel mathematical model to solve the optimal rebroadcast probability. For non-fully connected topologies, it distinguishes egress nodes and non-egress nodes to calculate rebroadcast probability separately. Different from related literature that only carried out simulation experiment evaluations, the paper has carried out a large number of physical experiment evaluations. The experimental results show that the protocol can obtain satisfactory packet delivery ratio and end-to-end delay under different network topologies.