Radio networks are a long-studied model for distributed system of devices which communicate wirelessly. When these devices are mobile or have limited capabilities, the system is often best modeled by the ad-hoc variant, in which the devices do not know the structure of the network. A large body of work has been devoted to designing algorithms for the ad-hoc model, particularly for fundamental communications tasks such as broadcasting. Most of these algorithms, however, assume that devices have some network knowledge (usually bounds on the number of nodes in the network @math , and the diameter @math ), which may not always be realistic in systems with weak devices or gradual deployment. Very little is known about what can be done when this information is not available. This is the issue we address in this work, by presenting the first broadcasting algorithms for networks in which nodes have no prior knowledge whatsoever. We demonstrate that lack of parameter knowledge can be overcome at only a small increase in running time. Specifically, we show that in networks without collision detection, broadcast can be achieved in @math time, almost reaching the @math lower bound. We also give an algorithm for directed networks with collision detection, which requires only @math time.
A deterministic algorithm for broadcasting in radio networks without parameter knowledge is given in @cite_1 , with a running time of @math , where @math is the range of unique IDs with which nodes are equipped.
@cite_1
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We consider the problem of broadcasting in an unknown radio network modeled as a directed graph @math , where @math . In unknown networks, every node knows only its own label, while it is unaware of any other parameter of the network, including its neighborhood and even any upper bound on the number of nodes. We show an @math upper bound on the time complexity of deterministic broadcasting. This is an improvement over the currently best upper bound @math for arbitrary networks, thus shrinking exponentially the existing gap between the lower bound @math and the upper bound from @math to @math .