A survey of multipoint relay based broadcast schemes in wireless ad hoc networks

Almost every routing protocol in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) depends on a broadcast scheme to disseminate routing information. For this reason, creating an efficient broadcast scheme is important and a large variety of approaches have been proposed. Among them, multipoint relay (MPR) is one of the distributed broadcast schemes which is efficient and simple. Based on the MPR concept, many broadcast schemes have been proposed, which generally focus on different performance issues. In this article we present a comprehensive survey of MPR-based broadcast schemes, classified into three categories based on their objectives. Different heuristics are described, and the evaluation of their performances is provided in light of their costs. Advantages and limitations of different broadcast schemes are also highlighted.