Enabling off-the-grid telephony: an adaptive probabilistic model for broadcasting in ad-hoc mobile phone networks

Abstract

Ad-hoc peer-to-peer mobile phone networks (phone-MANETs) can enable village level telephony for cash-strapped, off-the-grid communities in developing regions. Broadcasting is a fundamental operation in such MANETs (Mobile Ad-hoc Networks) and is used for route discovery. Cost and power consumption optimizations are critical for such systems. Hence, lightweight broadcast techniques which can operate on basic devices and incur low overheads are more pragmatic than their more complex counterparts. This paper proposes a new broadcast technique for rural phone-MANETS that is lightweight, efficient and incurs low latency. Using extensive simulations, the proposed technique is compared to existing lightweight broadcast protocols. The results show that the new technique is successful in outperforming existing lightweight techniques on multiple criteria that are important for a phone-MANET.