A Review of Broadcasting Methods for Mobile Ad Hoc Network

N.Karthikeyan1 Dr.V.Palanisamy2 Dr.K.Duraiswamy3

1
Research Scholar, Department of Computer Application
SNS College of Technology, Sathy Main Road, Coimbatore-641035, Tamilnadu, India
Telephone: +91-422-2669118, Mobile: +91-98427 90907 E-Mail: kaartheekeyan@rediffmail.com
2
Principal, Info Institute of Engineering and Technology, Sathy Main Road, Coimbatore-641107.
3
Dean, K.S. Rangasamy College of Technology, Tiruchengode - 637215.

Abstract: Mobile Ad-Hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of wireless mobile hosts forming a
temporary network without the aid of any stand-alone infrastructure or centralized administration.
Mobile Ad-hoc networks are self-organizing and self-configuring multi hop wireless networks
where, the structure of the network changes dynamically. This is mainly due to the mobility of
nodes. The Nodes in the network not only acts as hosts but also as routers that route data to or
from other nodes in network. In mobile ad-hoc networks where there is no infrastructure support
as is the case with wireless networks, and since a destination node might be out of range of a
source node transmitting packets; a routing procedure is always needed to find a path so as to
forward the packets appropriately between the source and the destination. Network wide
broadcasting is an important function in MANETs, which attempts to deliver packets from a
source node to all other nodes in the network. Network wide broadcasting provides route
establishment and control functionality for a number of unicast and multicast protocols. This
paper discusses a broad range of research issues such as routing and routing protocols and
different broadcasting approaches in MANET environment.

Keywords: Mobile ad hoc network, routing protocols, broadcasting methods

1. INTRODUCTION devices communicate with access points like

base stations connected to the fixed network
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) infrastructure. It is depict in Figure.1(a)
created a Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) working
group to standardize IP routing protocol functionality 2) Infrastructure-less – In Figure.1 (b)
suitable for wireless routing application within both static infrastructure-less approach, the mobile
and dynamic topologies with increased dynamics due to wireless network is commonly known as a
node motion and other factors. The vision of ad hoc mobile ad hoc network (MANET). A MANET
network is wireless internet, where users can move is a collection of wireless nodes that can
anywhere anytime and still remaining connected with the dynamically form a network to exchange
rest of the world. information without using any pre-existing
fixed network infrastructure.
The Mobile Ad-Hoc Network is characterized by
energy constrained nodes, bandwidth constrained links
and dynamic topology. In real-time applications, such as
audio, video, and real-time data, the ad hoc networks
need for Quality of Service (QoS) in terms of delay,
bandwidth, and packet loss is becoming important.
Providing QoS in ad-hoc networks is a challenging task
because of dynamic nature of network topology and
imprecise state information. Hence it is important to have
a dynamic routing protocol with fast re-routing
capability, which also provides stable route during the
life-time of the flows. Generally there are two distinct Figure 1: MANET Approaches
approaches for enabling wireless mobile units to
communicate with each other: The infrastructure-less approach is increasingly
becoming a very important part of communication
1) Infrastructure-based - Wireless mobile networks technology, because in many contexts information
have traditionally been based on the cellular exchange between mobile units cannot rely on any
concept and relied on good infrastructure support fixed network infrastructure, but on rapid
such as access point and backbone. Here mobile configuration of a wireless connections on-the-fly. In
infrastructure less network, a MANET consists of a set
of mobile nodes that may communicate with one another
from time to time, and where no base stations present.
Each host is equipped with a CSMA/CA transceiver. In
such case, a mobile node may communicate with each
other directly or indirectly. If it is a indirect
communication, a multi-hop scenario occurs, where the
packets originated from the source host are relayed by
several intermediate mobile nodes before reaching the
destination.
Broadcasting is often used as a building block for
route discovery in on-demand ad hoc routing protocols.
For designing for ad hoc networks, one of the primary
goal is to reduce the overhead (collision and
retransmission, redundant retransmission) while reaching
all the nodes in the network. In wireless broadcasting, if
all neighboring nodes relay or rebroadcast the received
packet immediately, it will result in the problem of
“broadcast storm”. To avoid the broadcast storm
problem, some form of randomized delay can be
introduced before a neighboring node relays the received
packet. The performance of broadcast protocols can be
measured by a variety of metrics. A commonly used
metric is the number of messages retransmissions with
respect to the number of nodes. The next important
metric is reachability or the ratio of nodes connected to
the source that received the broadcast message. Time
delay or latency is sometimes used, which is the time
needed for the last node to receive the broadcast message
initiated at the source.
1. 1. MANET Characteristics
The fundamental difference between fixed networks
and MANET is that the computers in a MANET are
mobile. Due to the mobility of these nodes, there are
some characteristics that are only applicable to MANET.
Some of the key characteristics are described below [1]:
1. Dynamic Network Topologies: Nodes are free to
move arbitrarily, meaning that the network topology,
which is typically multi-hop, may change randomly
and rapidly at unpredictable times.
2. Bandwidth constrained links: Wireless links have
significantly lower capacity than their hardwired
counterparts. They are also less reliable due to the
nature of signal propagation.
3. Energy constrained operation: Devices in a mobile
network may rely on batteries or other exhaustible
means as their power source. For these nodes, the
conservation and efficient use of energy may be the
most important system design criteria.
The MANET characteristics described above imply
different assumptions for routing algorithms as the
routing protocol must be able to adapt to rapid changes
in the network topology.
1.2 Applications of MANET
There are numerous scenarios that do not have an
available network infrastructure and could benefit
from the creation of an ad hoc network.
 Rescue/Emergency operations:
Rapid installation of a communication
infrastructure during a natural/environmental
disaster that demolished the existing
communication infrastructure line telephone
lines, backbones and access points.
 Law enforcement activities:
Rapid installation of a communication
infrastructure during special operations.
 Commercial projects: Simple
installation of a communication infrastructure
for commercial gatherings such as conferences,
exhibitions, workshops and meetings.
 Educational classrooms: Simple
installation of a communication infrastructure
to create an interactive classroom on demand.
Figure 2: Ad-hoc Technology for Military Communications
With the increase of portable devices as well as
progress in wireless communication, ad hoc
networking is gaining importance with the increasing
number of widespread applications. Ad hoc
networking can be applied anywhere where there is
little or no communication infrastructure or the
existing infrastructure is expensive or inconvenient
to use. Typical applications include [2]:
• Military battlefield: Ad hoc networking would
allow the military to take advantage of
commonplace network technology to maintain
an information network between the soldiers,
vehicles, and military information head quarters.
Ad hoc Technology for military communication
is shown in Figure. 2.
• Commercial sector: Emergency rescue
operations (like fire, flood, earthquake, etc.,)
must take place where non-existing or damaged
 communications infrastructure and rapid
deployment of a communication network is needed.
• Local level: Ad hoc networks can autonomously
link an instant and temporary multimedia network
using notebook computers or palmtop computers to
spread and share information among participants at a
e.g. conference or classroom.
• Personal Area Network (PAN): Short-range
MANET can simplify the intercommunication
between various mobile devices (such as a PDA, a
laptop, and a cellular phone).
2. ROUTING PROTOCOLS IN MANET
Broadcasting may be used to disseminate data to all
other nodes in the network or may be used by MANET
unicast or multicast routing protocols to disseminate
control information. For example, unicast protocols such
as Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), Ad Hoc On Demand
Distance Vector (AODV), Zone Routing Protocol (ZRP)
and Location Aided Routing (LAR) use broadcasting to
establish routes. Currently these protocols all rely on a
simple form of plain or blind flooding technique, in
which each node retransmits each received unique packet
exactly one time. The main role of broadcasting methods
in Routing protocols are route discovery process in
several routing protocols such as DSR, AODV, ZRP, and
LAR, when advising an error message to erase invalid
routes from the routing table, or as an efficient
mechanism for reliable multicast in a fast-moving
MANET. According to the routing strategy the routing
protocols can be categorized as [3, 4]
 Proactive routing protocols and
 Reactive on-demand routing protocols
2.1 Proactive (Table-Driven) Routing Protocols
These routing protocols are similar to and come as
a natural extension of those for the wired networks. In
proactive routing, each node has one or more tables that
contain the latest information of the routes to any node in
the network. The two kinds of table updating in proactive
protocols are the periodic update and the triggered
update. In periodic update, each node periodically
broadcasts its table in the network. Each node just
arriving in the network receives that table. In triggered
update, as soon as a node detects a change in its
neighborhood, it broadcasts entries in its routing table
that have changed as a result.
Proactive routing tends to waste bandwidth and
power in the network because of the need to broadcast
the routing tables/updates. Furthermore, as the number of
nodes in the MANET increases, the size of the table will
increase; this can become a problem in and of itself.
DSDV, which is known not to be suitable for large dense
networks, was described in. A route table at each node
enumerates all available destinations and the
corresponding hop-count from the node. Each route
table entry is tagged with a sequence number, which
is created by a destination node. To maintain
consistency of the route tables in a dynamically
changing network topology, each node transmits
table updates either periodically (periodic update) or
when new significant information is available
(triggered update).
Routing information is advertised by
broadcasting or multicasting. The packets are
transmitted periodically and incrementally as
topological changes are detected. Topological
changes include movement of a node from place to
place or the disappearance of the node from the
network. Information about the time interval between
arrival of the very first routing solution and the
arrival of the best routing solution for each particular
destination is also maintained. On the basis of this
information, a decision may be made to delay
advertising routes that are about to change, thus,
reducing fluctuations in the route tables. The
advertisement of possible unstable routes is delayed
to reduce the number of rebroadcasts of possible
route entries that normally arrive with the same
sequence number.
The proactive routing protocols are
Destination-sequenced distance vector
(DSDV)
Wireless routing protocol
(WRP)
Global state routing (GSR)
Fisheye state routing (FSR)
Source-tree adaptive routing
(STAR)
Distance routing effect algorithm for mobility
(DREAM)
Multimedia support in mobile wireless network
(MMWN)
Cluster-head gateway switch routing
(CGSR)
Hierarchical state routing (HSR)
Optimized link state routing
(OLSR)
Topology broadcast reverse path forwarding
(TBRP
F)
2.2 Reactive Routing Protocols
On-demand routing protocols were designed to
reduce the overheads in proactive protocols by
maintaining information for active routes only. This
means routes are determined and maintained for
nodes that require to send data to a particular
destination. Route discovery usually occurs by flooding a
route request packets through the network.
Reactive protocols can be classified into two
categories: source routing and hop-by-hop routing. In
source routed on-demand protocols each data packets
carry the complete the source to destination address.
Therefore, each intermediate node forwards these
packets according to the information kept in the header
of each packet. This means that the intermediate nodes
do not need to maintain up-to-date routing information
for each active route in order to forward the packet
towards the destination. Furthermore, nodes do not need
to maintain neighbor connectivity through periodic
beacon messages. The major drawback of with source
routing protocols is that in large networks they do not
perform well. This is due to two main reasons; firstly as
the number of intermediate nodes in each route grows,
then so does the probability of route failure. Secondly, as
the number of intermediate nodes in each route grows,
then the amount of overhead carried in each header of
each packet will grow as well. Therefore, in large
networks with significant levels of multi-hoping and
high levels of mobility, these protocols may not scale
well.
In hop-by-hop routing (also called as point-to-point
routing) each data packet only carries the destination
address and the next hop address. Therefore, each
intermediate node in the path to the destination uses its
routing table to forward each data packet towards the
destination. The advantage of this strategy is that routes
are adaptable to the dynamically changing environment
of MANETs, since each node can update its routing table
when they receiver fresher topology information and
hence forward the data packets over fresher and better
routes. Using fresher route recalculations are required
during data transmission. The disadvantage of this
strategy is that each intermediate node must store and
maintain routing information for each active route and
each node may require to be aware of their surrounding
neighbors through the use of beaconing messages.
The reactive routing protocols are
Ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV)
Dynamic source routing (DSR)
Routing on-demand acyclic multi-path (ROAM)
Light-weight mobile routing (LMR)
Temporally ordered routing algorithm (TORA)
Associated-based routing (ABR)
Signal stability adaptive (SSA)
Relative distance micro-discovery ad hoc routing
(RDMAR)
Location-aided routing (LAR)
Ant-colony-based routing algorithm (ARA)
Flow oriented routing protocol (FORP)
Cluster-based routing protocol (CBRP)
3.0 BROADCASTING IN MANET
Network-wide broadcasting [5] aims at
distributing messages from the source node to all
other nodes in the network. Broadcasting is a major
communication primitive required by many
applications and protocols in MANETs. Broadcast
protocols are a fundamental building block to realize
principal middleware functionalities such as
replication, group management and consensus.
Furthermore, broadcasting is frequently used to
discover and advertise resources. A simple example
of resource discovery is the route discovery in many
reactive routing protocols. Broadcasting is also
frequently used to distribute content to all network
participants, such as alarm signals or
announcements. In highly dynamic scenarios,
broadcasting serves as a robust way of realizing
other communication primitives, such as multicast.
Design Issues
The air interface is a shared medium, which
shows its broadcast nature. This broadcast nature of
radio channels can be exploited for simple and
efficient local broadcasting. We refer by local
broadcast or MAC broadcast to the capability of
sending one message to all nodes within the
communication range using one single transmission.
This capability can be used to send network-control
traffic to all neighbors (e.g. HELLO beacons) or to
support broadcasting algorithms. Since in a shared
medium a broadcast to all nodes in the transmission
range costs the sender as much as one unicast
transmission to a single neighbor, it is recommended
that broadcasting strategies exploit this property.
Here, we focus on the IEEE 802.11 standard.
Therefore, all nodes located within the
communication range are able to receive a local
broadcast. Using local broadcast nodes do not use the
optional RTS/CTS optimization of CSMA/CA, but
transmit data (on a free channel) and without any
consideration for hidden terminals. The lack of the
RTS/CTS feature may also lead to the exposed
terminal problem, which reduces the network
capacity. Therefore, MAC broadcasting decreases
the reliability of data delivery compared to sending
the message to all neighbors using unicast with the
RTS/CTS scheme. However, MAC broadcasting
massively reduces the number of transmissions
compared to the unicast-based broadcast.
Accordingly, MAC broadcasting is frequently used
to develop broadcast protocols in MANETs.
The most straightforward solution for
broadcasting is when nodes forward a received
message to all their neighbors using local broadcasts.
Eventually, all nodes within the network should
receive the message. This primitive strategy is like a
flood and therefore, is called plain flooding (also
called simple flooding, pure flooding, or blind
flooding). Even though flooding might lead to an
unnecessary message overhead, it should provide a
robust basic strategy for broadcasting in networks
with an unknown or changing topology. Due to its
simplicity, localized nature, and topology transparency,
flooding is widely used in MANETs as a basic scheme
for many broadcast protocols. However, the
characteristics of MANETs still prohibit a flooding
process from reaching every node. If the density of nodes
is too high, the radio transmission will block out
messages, since too many nodes are repeating their
incoming messages. This problem is referred to as
broadcast storms [6]. It describes three major problems
that in particular occur if plain flooding is used to realize
broadcasting in crowded MANETs: redundancy,
collisions and contention.
Redundancy takes place if message forwarding is
useless because it only reaches nodes that already have
received the message. In order to send a broadcast
message, a mobile node only needs to assess a clear
channel before transmitting. Therefore, collision (e.g.
due to a hidden node) may occur frequently. Without
further measures, a mobile node is not able to know
whether a message was successfully received by its
neighbors. Contention occurs if the sender has messages
in its MAC buffer but it could not send them. Depending
on the buffer strategy and its parameters, messages may
be deleted from the queue, if the channel is blocked by
other neighbors.
In order to relieve the broadcast storm problem,
strategies to restrict forwarding to a subset of nodes have
to be developed. It is obvious that for a fixed
communication range the intensity of the broadcast
storm problem depends on the node density, i.e. number
of nodes per unit of area. Therefore, node density has a
great impact on the performance of such strategies. On
the other hand, if node density is very low, the network
becomes partitioned and flooding will only reach nodes
in the partition containing the source. The common
approach to deal with partitioning is that nodes cache
messages and repeat forwarding at the appropriate time,
i.e. partition join. We call each repetition and subsequent
forward a rebroadcast. For this purpose we need efficient
repetitive strategies. Global view detection may become
very costly in MANETs and particularly in highly
mobile ones. Therefore, scenario detection is undesired
in MANETs. Furthermore the same node may participate
in different MANET scenarios. As a result, we require a
generalized technique for broadcasting, which is suitable
for most of application scenarios.
4.0 RELATED WORK
The following are the qualitative and quantitative
analysis of broadcasting methods of MANET by means
of different performance metrics.
Fei Dai, Jie Wu [7], proposed and implemented an
efficient broadcast protocol for ad hoc networks using
directional antennas. This protocol, called directional
self-pruning (DSP), is a non-trivial generalization of an
existing localized deterministic broadcast protocol using
omni directional antennas. Compared with its omni
directional predecessor, DSP achieves much lower
broadcast redundancy and conserves bandwidth and
energy consumption. DSP is based on 2-hop
topology information and does not rely on any
location or angle-of-arrival (AoA) information. A
special case of DSP can be used for preserving
shortest paths in on-demand route discovery
processes. Another special case of DSP is proposed
to use the directional reception mode in
broadcasting. This paper proved that the average
number of forward nodes in DSP is within a constant
factor of the minimal value in an optimal solution.
Extensive simulation results show that DSP
outperforms many existing directional and omni
directional broadcast protocols in terms of efficiency
and/or reliability.
Jie Wu, Fei Dai[8], proposed and evaluated a
mobility management method based on the use of
two transmission ranges. Using this mechanism, it
can also be extended Wu and Dai’s coverage
condition to a dynamic environment where network
topology is allowed to change, even during the
broadcast process. In addition, connectivity, link
availability, and consistency issues related to
neighborhood information of different nodes have
also been addressed. This scheme can also be
extended to provide mobility management for other
activities such as topology control in MANETs.
Ivan, Mahtab and Jovisa[9] proposed the
broadcasting method significantly to reduce the or
eliminate the communication overhead of a
broadcasting task by applying the concept
neighboring nodes. Retransmissions by only internal
nodes in a dominating set are sufficient for reliable
broadcasting. It also proposed to eliminate neighbors
that already received the message and rebroadcast
only if the list of neighbors that might need the
message is nonempty. The important features of this
work is reliability (reaching all nodes in the absence
of message collisions), significant rebroadcast
savings, and their localized and parameter less
behavior. The reduction communication overhead for
broadcasting take is measured experimentally.
5.0 BROADCASTING METHODS IN
MANET
5.1 Simple Flooding Method
In this method[10], a source node of a
MANET disseminates a message to all its
neighbors, each of these neighbors will check if
they have seen this message before, if yes the
message will be dropped, if not the message will
redisseminated at once to all their neighbors. The
process goes on until all nodes have the message.
Although this method is very reliable for a MANET
with low density nodes and high mobility but it is
very harmful and unproductive as it causes severe
network congestion and quickly exhaust the battery
power. Blind flooding ensures the coverage; the
broadcast packet is guaranteed to be received by every
node in the network, providing there is no packet loss
caused by collision in the MAC layer and there is no
high-speed movement of nodes during the broadcast
process. However, due to the broadcast nature of wireless
communication media, redundant transmissions in blind
flooding may cause the broadcast storm problem [11], in
which redundant packets cause contention and collision.
5.2 Probability based Approach
Probabilistic based Flooding:
The Probabilistic scheme [10, 11] is similar to
Flooding, except that nodes only rebroadcast with a
predetermined probability. In dense networks multiple
nodes share similar transmission coverage. Thus,
randomly having some nodes not rebroadcast saves node
and network resources without harming delivery
effectiveness. In sparse networks, there is much less
shared coverage; thus, nodes won’t receive all the
broadcast packets with the Probabilistic scheme unless
the probability parameter is high. When the probability is
100%, this scheme is identical to Flooding.
Counter-Based Scheme:
Ni [12] et al show an inverse relationship between
the number of times a packet is received at a node and
the probability of that node being able to reach additional
area on a rebroadcast. This result is the basis of their
Counter-Based scheme. Upon reception of a previously
unseen packet, the node initiates a counter with a value
of one and sets a Random Access Delay(RAD) (which is
randomly chosen between 0 and Tmax seconds). During
the RAD, the counter is incremented by one for each
redundant packet received. If the counter is less than a
threshold value when the RAD expires, the packet is
rebroadcast. Otherwise, it is simply dropped.
5.3 Area Based Methods
Suppose a node receives a packet from a sender that
is located only one meter away. If the receiving node
rebroadcasts, the additional area covered by the
retransmission is quite low. On the other extreme, if a
node is located at the boundary of the sender node’s
transmission distance, then a rebroadcast would reach
significant additional area, 61% to be precise[12]. A
node using an Area Based Method can evaluate
additional coverage area based on all received redundant
transmissions. We note that area based methods only
consider the coverage area of a transmission; they don’t
consider whether nodes exist within that area.
Distance-Based Scheme:
A node using the Distance-Based Scheme compares
the distance between itself and each neighbor node that
has previously rebroadcast a given packet1. Upon
reception of a previously unseen packet, a RAD is
initiated and redundant packets are cached. When the
RAD expires, all source node locations are examined to
see if any node is closer than a threshold distance
value. If true, the node doesn’t rebroadcast.
Location-Based Scheme:
The Location-Based scheme uses a more
precise estimation of expected additional coverage
area in the decision to rebroadcast. In this method,
each node must have the means to determine its own
location, e.g., a Global Positioning System (GPS).
Whenever a node originates or rebroadcasts a packet
it adds its own location to the header of the packet.
When a node initially receives a packet, it notes the
location of the sender and calculates the additional
coverage area obtainable were it to rebroadcast. If the
additional area is less than a threshold value, the
node will not rebroadcast, and all future receptions of
the same packet will be ignored. Otherwise, the node
assigns a RAD before delivery. If the node receives a
redundant packet during the RAD, it recalculates the
additional coverage area and compares that value to
the threshold. The area calculation and threshold
comparison occur with all redundant broadcasts
received until the packet reaches either its scheduled
send time or is dropped.
5.4 Neighbor Knowledge Method
Self Pruning:
Self Pruning is an effective method in reducing
broadcast redundancy. Each node in this approach
is required to have knowledge of its neighbors,
this knowledge can be achieved by periodic
”Hello” messages. The receiving node will first
compare its neighbor lists to that of sender’s list, the
receiving node will rebroadcast if the additional
nodes could be reached, otherwise the receiving
node will drop the message. This is the simplest
approach in the neighbor knowledge method. In
Figure 3, after receiving a message from node 2 node
1 will rebroadcast the message to node 4 and node 3
as it’s only additional nodes. Note that node 5
also will rebroadcast the same message to node
4 as it’s only additional node. In this situation still
the message redundancy takes place.
6
5
4
7
1 2
3
Figure 3: Self Pruning approach
Ad Hoc Broadcasting Approach:
In this approach, only nodes selected as gateway
nodes and a broadcast message header are allowed to
rebroadcast the message. The approach is described as
follows:
1. Locate all two hop neighbors that can only be
reached by a one hop neighbor. Select these one
hop neighbors as gateways.
2. Calculate the cover set that will receive the
message from the current gateway set
3. for the neighbors not yet in the gateway set, find
the one that would cover the most two hop
neighbors not in the cover set. Set this one hop
neighbor as a gateway.
4. Repeat process 2 and 3 until all two hop neighbors are
covered.
5. When a node receives a message and is a
gateway, this node determines which of its
neighbors already received the message in the same
transmission. These neighbors are considered already
covered and are dropped from the neighbor used to
select the next hop gateways.
5 nodes they communicate with and these routes are
4 by a route discovery mechanism, which uses
6 broadcasting strategies to distribute control messages
1 for route discovery.
2
3 Another important application field for
Figure 4: Ad hoc broadcasting approach
In Figure 4-Ad hoc broadcasting approach, node 2 has 1,
5 and 6 nodes as one hop neighbors, 3 and 4 nodes has
two hop neighbors. Node 3 can be reached through node
1 as a one hop neighbor of node 2. Node 4 can be
reached through node 1 or node 5 as one hop neighbors
of node 2. Node 3 selects node 1 as a gateway to
rebroadcast the message to nodes 3 and 4. Upon
receiving the message node 5 will not rebroadcast the
message as it is not a gateway.
6.0 APPLICATIONS OF BROADCASTING
IN MANET
Content Distribution Applications:
A typical application for broadcasting in MANETs
is news spreading. Examples are the broadcasting of aid
information in a disaster area to coordinate relief actions
(e.g. fire fighting [13]), the dissemination of parking
availability in a city scenario, dissemination of accident
information in VANETs and the dissemination of alarms
and announcements. Further content distribution
applications are publish-subscribe applications, where
some nodes are subscribers to content providers. These
applications typically run in the background for a few
hours or even a few days. Examples are Usenet-on-fly
[14], latency insensitive data [15] and file sharing in a
peer-to-peer (P2P) manner [16].
Resource Discovery and Advertisement:
Further typical broadcast scenarios are resource
(or service) discovery and advertisement. MANET
nodes may have little or no knowledge at all about
the capabilities and services offered by each other.
Therefore, mechanisms for resource discovery or
advertisement are important for these self-
configurable networks. Due to the decentralized and
highly dynamic nature of MANETs, service
discovery and service advertisement frequently use
broadcasting strategies. An example of resources is a
multi-hop routing path to a given destination. For
highly dynamic topologies the route is continuously
changing and the resource is so highly dynamic that
maintaining a route to all nodes at every time is very
costly. However, most of the time, it is not necessary
to have an up-to-date route to all other nodes. Hence,
a novel class of reactive routing protocols, such as
DSR [17] and AODV [18] has been developed.
Reactive routing protocols only set up routes to
kept alive as long as they are needed. This is realized
Sensor Data Dissemination:
broadcasting is the sensor data dissemination. Real-
time sensor data may be disseminated to other nodes
in order to realize a fully-replicated database, where
every database node has a consistent view of real
time events. Data consistency algorithms act on
disseminated observation data and chronologically
order observed events in MANETs.
7.0 CONCLUSION
This paper presents an overview of the
characteristics, applications and features MANET.
Also we have done the detailed review of
broadcasting methods of MANET and its
applications. It concluded that simple flooding
requires each node to rebroadcast all packets.
Probability based methods use some basic
understanding of the network topology to assign a
probability to a node to rebroadcast. Area based
methods assume nodes have common transmission
distances: a node will rebroadcast only if the
rebroadcast will reach sufficient additional coverage
area. Neighbor knowledge methods maintain state on
their neighborhood via “Hello” packets, which are
used in the decision to rebroadcast. Broadcasting is
an essential building block of any MANET, so it is
imperative to utilize the most efficient broadcast
methods possible to ensure a reliable network. The
existing broadcasting schemes do not yield good
performance for other scenarios. Different
comparative studies show that most of the methods
require more rebroadcasts with respect to the number
 of the retransmitting nodes, thus facing problems in a
high density mobile MANET.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank Dr. S.N.
Subbramanian, Director cum Secretary,
Dr.S.Rajalakshmi, Correspondent, Dr.V.P. Arunachalam,
Principal, SNS College of Technology, Coimbatore for
their motivation and constant encouragement. The author
would like to thank Supervisor Dr. V. Palanisamy,
Principal, Info Institute of Engineering and Joint
Supervisor Dr.K.Duraiswamy, Dean, KSR College of
Technology for their valuable inputs and fruitful
discussions
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