Fuzzy-controlled Rebroadcasting in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The simplest and commonly used mechanism for broadcasting in ad hoc networks is flooding, where each node transmits every uniquely received message exactly once. Despite its simplicity, it can result in highly redundant retransmission, contention, collision in the network i.e. a phenomenon referred to as the broadcast storm problem. Several probabilistic approaches have been proposed to mitigate this problem. However, majority of these schemes use fixed rebroadcast probability, which is quite unlikely to be optimal. In this article, we propose a fuzzy-controlled rebroadcast probability function, which takes into account network density, maximum hop count, remaining energy of the current node, its rebroadcast responsibility as far as its downlink neighbors are concerned, and its radio-range compared to the minimum and maximum radio-range of the network.