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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In this paper we improve the deterministic complexity of two fundamental communication primitives in the classical model of ad hoc radio networks with unknown topology: broadcasting and wake-up. We consider an unknown radio network, in which all nodes have no prior knowledge about network topology, and know only the size of the network @math , the maximum in-degree of any node @math , and the eccentricity of the network @math . For such networks, we first give an algorithm for wake-up, based on the existence of small universal synchronizers. This algorithm runs in @math time, the fastest known in both directed and undirected networks, improving over the previous best @math -time result across all ranges of parameters, but particularly when maximum in-degree is small. Next, we introduce a new combinatorial framework of block synchronizers and prove the existence of such objects of low size. Using this framework, we design a new deterministic ...