Latency Reduction in Probabilistic Broadcast Protocols for Ad Hoc Networks

This letter introduces a strategy to reduce broadcast latency in multi-hop ad-hoc networks; this overall reduction is the result of the accumulation of a series of per-node delay reductions. Current broadcasting protocols employ uniformly distributed random delays on a per-node basis, while the proposed strategy consists of using a truncated-exponential distribution to determine these delays. Such an approach can reduce latency significantly while maintaining broadcasting reachability, yet it entails minimal additional overhead in relation to existing protocols.