Routing and Broadcasting in Ad-Hoc Networks

In this paper, we introduce two protocols - a routing and a broadcasting protocol - for ad-hoc networks which are based on a new paradigm enabled by the broadcast property of the wireless propagation medium. Nodes simply broadcast packets such that forwarding decisions are no longer taken at the sender of a packet, but in a completely distributed manner at the receivers. Consequently, nodes do not require knowledge about their neighbors. In this way, control traffic can be eliminated almost completely which in turn conserves scarce network resources such as battery power and bandwidth. Furthermore, as these two protocols are almost stateless and nodes do not store network topology information they remain unaffected by even very high rates of topology change and prove highly scalable in terms of number of nodes.