A new broadcast scheme for sensor networks

The future of the Internet envisions connecting all objects around us in a proactive way in what is known as the Internet of Things (IoT). Wireless sensor networks (WSN) represent a prominent example of IoT. Broadcasting is one of most important procedures in wireless networks. However, broadcast may have immense effect on the network´s performance in what is know as the broadcast storm problem. In this work, we propose a new broadcast scheme to address the broadcast storm problem. The proposed scheme is an amalgamation of three popular broadcast schemes: the probabilistic scheme, the distance-based scheme and the counter-based scheme. The proposed scheme is implemented and tested on the QualNet simulation environment where it is integrated into the Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol. The results show that the percentage of saved rebroadcasts can reach more than 50% in some cases.