WiLE: Leader Election in Wireless Networks

Numerous applications of multi-hop wireless networks benefit from or require the use of leaders, determined on the basis of some quantifiable and comparable criteria. In this paper, we propose an efficient scheme for electing the top K leaders of a multi-hop wireless network with N ≥ K nodes. The proposed protocol, called WiLE for Wireless Leader Election, is distributed and, by means of the sole exchange of packets among neighbors, terminates providing each node with the unique ID of the elected leaders and their rank. The correctness of the protocol is analytically proven. WiLE is implemented both on a physical testbed and in the GreenCastalia simulator. Our experimental evaluations demonstrate the effectiveness of WiLE in determining network leaders swiftly and efficiently. The performance of WiLE is compared to that of other previously proposed leader election protocols, Vasudevan and Raychoudhury. Results show that WiLE determines the top K global network leaders faster and consuming less energy than previous solutions. On average, WiLE is shown to complete in 17% of the time taken by Vasudevan, transmitting 12% of the bytes transmitted by that protocol. Against Raychoudhury, WiLE takes 34% of the time and transmits only 23% of the bytes transmitted by Raychoudhury.