Dynamic master selection in wireless networks

Abstract. Mobile wireless networks need to maximize their network lifetime (defined as the time until the first node runs out of energy). In the broadcast network lifetime problem, all nodes are sending broadcast traffic, and one asks for an assignment of transmit powers to nodes, and for sets of relay nodes so that the network lifetime is maximized. The selection of a dynamic relay set consisting of a single node (the ‘master’), can be regarded as a special case, providing lower bounds to the optimal lifetime in the general setting. This paper provides a first analysis of a ‘dynamic master selection’ algorithm

An analysis of the lifetime of OLSR networks

The Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) protocol is a well-known route discovery protocol for ad-hoc networks. OLSR optimizes the flooding of link state information through the network using multipoint relays (MPRs). Only nodes selected as MPRs are responsible for forwarding control traffic. Many research papers aim to optimize the selection of MPRs with a specific purpose in mind: e.g., to minimize their number, to keep paths with high Quality of Service or to maximize the network lifetime (the time until the first node runs out of energy). In such analyzes often the effects of the network structure on the MPR selection are not taken into account. In this paper we show that the structure of the network can have a large impact on the MPR selection. In highly regular structures (such as grids) there is even no variation in the MPR sets that result from various MPR selection mechanisms. Furthermore, we study the influence of the network structure on the network lifetime problem in a setting where at regular intervals messages are broadcasted using MPRs. We introduce the ’maximum forcedness ratio’, as a key parameter of the network to describe how much variation there is in the lifetime results of various MPR selection heuristics. Although we focus our attention to OLSR, being a widely implemented protocol, on a more abstract level our results describe the structure of connected sets dominating the 2-hop neighborhood of a node

Increasing network lifetime by battery-aware master selection in radio networks

Mobile wireless communication systems often need to maximize their network lifetime (defined as the time until the first node runs out of energy). In the broadcast network lifetime problem, all nodes are sending broadcast traffic, and one asks for an assignment of transmit powers to nodes, and for sets of relay nodes so that the network lifetime is maximized. The selection of a relay set consisting of a single node (the ‘master’), can be regarded as a special case of this problem. We provide a mean value analysis of algorithms controlling the selection of a master node with the objective of maximizing the network lifetime. The results show that already for small networks simple algorithms can extend the average network lifetime considerably