Speak less, hear enough: On dynamic announcement intervals in wireless on-demand networks

Several protocols used in wireless networks rely on nodes announcing information to other nodes. This can be illustrated by service announcements sent in ZeroConf, routing announcements used in OLSR, and peer announcements in wireless peer-to-peer or delay-tolerant networking systems such as Forban and Serval. The main problem is that these protocols use fixed time intervals between subsequent broadcast announcements. Fixed intervals can either lead to high network load (if the announcement interval is too short) or delay the distribution of information between peers (if the announcement interval is too long). Repeatedly broadcasting announcements after fixed intervals also has an impact on the energy consumption of mobile devices operating in wireless networks. In this paper, we present several approaches to realize dynamic announcement intervals that facilitate fast reception from at least one other node while trying to keep the overall communication overhead as low as possible. Experimental results in terms of performance properties and energy consumption are presented to illustrate the benefits of dynamic announcement intervals in wireless on-demand networks.