Minimum energy-cost broadcast routing in ad hoc wireless networks

In this paper, we discuss energy efficient broadcast in ad hoc wireless networks. The problem of our concern is: given an ad hoc wireless network, to find a broadcast tree such that the energy cost of the broadcast tree is minimized. Each node in the network is assumed to have a fixed level of transmission power. We first prove that the problem is NP-hard, and propose three heuristic algorithms, namely shortest path tree heuristic, greedy heuristic and node weighted Steiner tree based heuristic. The approximation ratio of the set-cover based heuristic is proved to be (1+2ln(n-1)). Extensive simulations have been conducted and the results have demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed algorithms.