A non-geometric broadcast scheme in dense wireless sensor networks

For scalable information routing and dissemination, broadcasting has been gaining tremendous interests of research in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), where each sensor node has inherent resource constraints in terms of battery energy, and computing and communication capabilities. Since a blind broadcasting can cause the broadcast storm problem, diverse broadcast strategies have been explored to increase the network coverage but to minimize the redundant rebroadcasts and packet collisions. In this thesis, a non-geometric broadcast approach is proposed. This is a sender-initiated broadcast approach, where a sender approximates its neighbor location without using a GPS and selects a set of forwarding candidate nodes located in the strategic positions based on a virtual hexagon-based coverage. A simple random backoff mechanism is also proposed to reduce the packet collisions. We develop a customized discrete-event driven simulator using the OMNeT++ to conduct our experiments. Two well-known broadcast schemes are modified to work in dense WSNs: Flooding and Ad Hoc Broadcast Protocol (AHBP). We conduct an extensive performance comparison study and the proposed scheme achieves a competitive and scalable performance in dense WSNs.