Adaptive neighbor-based topology control protocol for wireless multi-hop networks

Topology control protocols have been proposed to construct efficient network topologies with several design goals, e.g., network-wide connectivity, minimal energy cost, symmetry, lower nodal degree, and therefore higher spatial reuse or lower interferences. Neighbor-based topology control protocols are simple and assume that each node in the network is connected to its k least-distant neighbors. There have been several empirical and theoretical research efforts that recommend a network-wide optimal value of the local parameter k. However, since most of the design goals often run against each other the suggested lower and upper bounds on the values of k are not sufficient to provide a controllable trade-off among various design goals. In this article, an adaptive neighbor-based topology control protocol is presented where the neighboring nodes collaborate and provide feedback on the network connectivity to decide on their respective transmission ranges. Since every node adaptively adjusts its number of neighbors, the parameter k acts as a performance knob to choose a set of backbone nodes and to form a hierarchical topology structure consisting of symmetric links. Through extensive simulation-based study, it is shown that the value of k can be tuned to generate fully connected network topologies while offering an efficient trade-off among various design goals.