Maximum lifetime broadcast and multicast routing in unreliable wireless ad-hoc networks

The reliable broadcast and multicast lifetime maximization problems in energy-constrained wireless ad-hoc networks are considered in this paper. In packet loss-free networks, the optimal solution of lifetime maximization problem can be easily obtained by tree based algorithms. In unreliable networks, we formulate them as min-max tree problems. A link quality-aware heuristic algorithm called MLRBT (Maximum Lifetime Reliable Broadcast Tree) is proposed to build a broadcast tree that maximizes the network lifetime. The reliable multicast lifetime maximization problem can be solved as well by pruning the broadcast tree produced by the MLRBT algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms can significantly increase the network lifetime compared with the traditional algorithms under various distribution of unreliable communication links.