New adaptive counter based broadcast using neighborhood information in MANETS

Broadcasting in MANETs is a fundamental data dissemination mechanism, with important applications, e.g., route query process in many routing protocols, address resolution and diffusing information to the whole network. Broadcasting in MANETs has traditionally been based on flooding, which overwhelm the network with large number of rebroadcast packets. Fixed counter-based flooding has been one of the earliest suggested approaches to overcome blindflooding or the "broadcast storm problem". As the topological characteristics of mobile networks varies instantly, the need of an adapted counter-based broadcast emerge. This research argues that neighbouring information could be used to better estimate the counter-based threshold value at a given node. Additionally results of extensive simulation experiments performed in order to determine the minimum and maximum number of neighbours for a given node is shown. This is done based on locally available information and without requiring any assistance of distance measurements or exact location determination devices.