Distributed algorithms for energy-efficient broadcasting in ad hoc networks

Previously, we developed the broadcast incremental power (BIP) algorithm (Wieselthier, J.E. et al., Proc. IEEE INFOCOM 2000, p.585-94, 2000; Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET), vol.7, no.6, 2002), which is a centralized heuristic for energy-efficient broadcasting of source-initiated session-based traffic in wireless networks. This algorithm, which exploits the characteristics of the wireless channel, was shown to perform better than adaptations of conventional algorithms that were originally developed for wired networks. However, as a consequence of its centralized nature, it is "expensive" in terms of both communication and computation requirements. We now develop two distributed versions of BIP, and compare their performance to that of centralized BIP and to an algorithm based on the minimum-cost spanning tree formulation.