Beaconing in Wireless Mobile Networks

One of the intrinsic problems posed by mobility in wireless networks is the discovery of other nodes in the vicinity of a node to establish new links with them as well as detecting a link breakage. A widely used solution for this problem is to use different variations of beaconing. Here, we study the effect of the beacon settings on the link reliability and probability of link establishment. A poorly adjusted rate of beacon transmissions may lead to vast resource usage (power and bandwidth) on one side, or may lead to poor throughput on the other side. We use a general model without assuming a particular mobility model. The model is instantiated for periodic and exponential beaconing and it is then applied to compare two-way beaconing with one-way beaconing. Then, it is used to analyze the effect of connection setup time. Moreover, it is analytically proven that widely used periodic beaconing is not only the simplest beaconing scheme but also the optimal one in terms of beacon hit efficiency. Finally, the model is applied to a case study in delay-tolerant networks to study the effect of beacon interval on the capacity and the energy consumption of the network. Finally, a practical thumb of rule for beacon rate adjustment is suggested to bypass heavy computations.