On the Broadcast Latency in Finite Cooperative Wireless Networks

The aim of this paper is to study the effect of cooperation on system delay, quantified as the number of retransmissions required to deliver a broadcast message to all intended receivers. Unlike existing works on broadcast scenarios, where distance between nodes is not explicitly considered, we examine the joint effect of small scale fading and propagation path loss. Also, we study cooperation in application to finite networks, i.e. when the number of cooperating nodes is small. Stochastic geometry and order statistics are used to develop analytical models that tightly match the simulation results for non-cooperative scenario and provide a lower bound for delay in a cooperative setting. We demonstrate that even for a simple flooding scenario, cooperative broadcast achieves significantly lower system delay.