Quorum-based power-saving multicast protocols in the asynchronous ad hoc network

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2010.03.001 Byline: Yu-Chen Kuo Keywords: Ad hoc network; Chinese Remainder Theorem; Multicast protocol; Power management; Quorum systems Abstract: The asynchronous PS (Power-Saving) unicast protocol was designed for two PS wireless hosts to transmit the unicast message in the ad hoc network even their clocks are asynchronous. However, as regard to transmit a multicast message among more than two PS hosts, the protocol could not guarantee that all PS hosts can wake up at the same time. Some PS hosts may be in the PS mode when the multicast message is transmitted. Thus, the multicast message should be retransmitted again and again until all PS hosts receive the message. It will increase the energy consumption and the usage of the bandwidth. In this paper, we propose quorum-based PS multicast protocols for PS hosts to transmit multicast messages in the asynchronous ad hoc network. In those protocols, PS hosts use quorums to indicate their wakeup patterns. We introduce the rotation m-closure property to guarantee that m different quorums have the intersection even quorums are rotated due to asynchronous clocks. Thus, m PS hosts adopting m quorums satisfying the rotation m-closure property could wake up simultaneously and receive the multicast message even their clocks are asynchronous. We propose two quorum systems named the uniform k-arbiter and the CRT (Chinese Remainder Theorem) quorum system, which satisfy the rotation m-closure property. As shown in our analysis results, our quorum-based PS multicast protocols adopting those quorum systems can save more energy to transmit multicast messages. Author Affiliation: Department of Computer Science and Information Management, Soochow University, 56, Kueiyang St. Sec. 1, Taipei 100, Taiwan Article History: Received 19 July 2009; Revised 20 January 2010; Accepted 1 March 2010 Article Note: (footnote) [star] The preliminary version of this paper was presented in the Proceeding of the IEEE International Conference on Sensor Networks, Ubiquitous, and Trustworthy Computing (SUTC), 2008, pp. 332-337.