Scheduling broadcasts in wireless networks

We consider problems involving how to schedule broadcasts in a pulled-based data-disseminationservice, such as the DirecPC system, where data requested by the clients is delivered via broadcast. In particular, we consider the case where all the data items are of equal size and preemption is not allowed. We give an offline O(1)-speed O(1)-approximation algorithm for the problem of minimizing the average response time. We provide worst-case analysis, under various objective functions, of the online algorithms that have appeared in the literature, namely, Most Requests First, First Come First Served, and Longest Wait First. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.