Maximum Angle Based (MAB) Flooding for Ad-Hoc Sensor Networks

The unpredictable location of nodes in Ad-hoc and Sensor networks has caused new challenges to the known routing Algorithms. Flooding is the most frequently used method to ease these new difficulties. Flooding also plays an important role in unicast and multicast protocols in ad hoc networks. Unfortunately Flooding suffers from immense unnecessary overhead and thus wastes a great deal of energy. The waste of energy is totally unacceptable in Ad hoc networks, especially in sensor networks with tight power constrains and limited power source. In this letter we try to overcome the flooding problems by a new bandwidth efficient method for flooding called Maximum Angle Based flooding (MAB). The new algorithm reduces the number of unnecessary packets broadcast and thus saves a great deal of energy. In this new algorithm, each node uses a random delay before rebroadcast of the received packet. In the mean time the node monitors the incoming packets and makes a decision whether to rebroadcast or drop the packet. The decision is made based on the arrival direction of the packets. MAB results in a great reduction in total overhead and number of collisions with the cost of a little adverse effect in packet delivery latency.