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.