An optimized multi-hop broadcast scheme for mesh networks with node failures

Abstract

The flooding scheme represents one of the fundamental operations in wireless mesh networks. It plays an important role in the design of network and application protocols. Many solutions have been studied to address flooding issues in mesh networks. However, most of them are not able to operate efficiently when there are network equipment failures. In this paper, we consider node failures and we build a flooding tree that has the maximum expectation of throughput (taking into account the potential unavailability of certain nodes). After a formal mathematical definition, we propose two algorithms relevant to iterative improvement by exchanging flooding tree edges. The solutions found by these algorithms are compared in various configurations.