A performance Evaluation of Broadcast Communication in Wireless Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Abstract

Wireless mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have become of increasing interest in view of their promise to extend connectivity beyond traditional fixed infrastructure networks. Information broadcasting in MANETs is an essential building block for cooperative operations, group discussions, and common announcements (e.g., filling routing tables). The simplest form of broadcast in an ad hoc network is referred to as blind flooding. In this scheme, source nodes broadcast at once packets to all neighbors. Each of these neighbors in turn rebroadcasts the packet exactly once and this process continues until all accessible nodes in the network received the packet. Broadcasting through flooding causes increased messages redundancy, collision and contention, which we call that the broadcast storm problem. Several approaches have been proposed to solve these issues .e.g. Counter-based scheme. This scheme allows nodes to select an appropriate action, either to rebroadcast or to discard receiving messages. The decision is based on the amount of received messages. In this thesis, we compare the performance of the blind-flooding and Counter-based scheme via Simulation using as criteria retransmitting nodes, collision rate, end-to-end delay and reachability especially in the presence of mobility. The simulation scenarios consist of two different settings related to a particular network condition, the impact of network density and the impact of offered load. Keywords: MANETs, broadcasting, blind-flooding, counter-based, simulation, mobility , performance.