Crosscut Flooding in Ad Hoc Wireless Networks

Ad hoc network (AHN) is a collection of wireless mobile hosts that self-form a temporary network without the aid of any centralized administration or standard support services. Due to the universal mobility of all hosts, AHN is often applied to many important communication services such as broadcasting and multicasting. The traditional broadcast protocol (i.e. flooding) was suggested as a possible alternative method for reliable multicast in ad hoc networks because of its simplicity and minimal state retention in an unconstrained mobility network. However, it is still very insufficient and generates a lot of packet traffic overhead. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm that is based on the traditional flooding method but has a reduced overhead. By comparing and analyzing the simulation results of our protocol with others, we can see that the new protocol reduces packet traffic and collision, and causes less overhead.