Broadcast Protocols in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Revision with unchanged content. Broadcasting is a major communication primitive required by many applications and protocols in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). Most of the research conducted on broadcasting in MANETs has primarily focused only on carefully selected evaluation scenarios with respect to node density and node mobility. Consequently, the developed broadcasting schemes do not yield good performance for other scenarios. Node spatial distribution is a key issue for the performance of broadcast protocols, since it determines the connectivity of the MANET. Our survey of potential MANET application scenarios shows a wide range of possible node spatial distributions and node mobilities. This leads to that a MANET generally shows a continuously changing network connectivity over space and time. Therefore, a generalized solution for broadcasting that accounts for the requirements of the various applications and adapts to the heterogeneous and evolving node spatial distribution and mobility is a major contribution. In this book, we present hypergossiping, a novel generalized broadcasting technique for MANETs. The book is intended for professionals and researchers in the communications industry and academia.