Energy and Time Efficient Broadcasting in Known Topology Radio Networks

The paper considers broadcasting protocols in radio networks with known topology that are efficient in both time and energy. The radio network is modelled as an undirected graph G = (V,E) where |V | = n. It is assumed that during execution of the communication task every node in V is allowed to transmit at most once. Under this assumption it is shown that any radio broadcast protocol requires D + Ω( √ n−D) transmission rounds, where D is the diameter of G. This lower bound is complemented with an efficient construction of a deterministic protocol that accomplishes broadcasting in D +O( √ n log n) rounds. Moreover, if we allow each node to transmit at most k times, the lower bound D + Ω((n − D)) on the number of transmission rounds holds. We also provide a randomised protocol that accomplishes broadcasting in D + O(kn1/(k−2) log n) rounds. The paper concludes with a discussion of several other strategies for energy efficient radio broadcasting and a number of open problems in the area.