Efficient broadcasting for a MANET based peer-to- peer community radio service

Abstract

Ad hoc networks consisting entirely of simple mobile phones can be used to deploy village level telephony. We investigate a novel application for such networks – a peer-to peer community radio service. We envision a system, where any user in the network is equally empowered to generate and distribute audio content to the entire network, using his or her mobile phone. This study concentrates on a critical aspect of this service – the choice of the network-wide broadcast protocol. Using extensive simulations, we evaluate the suitability of various broadcast techniques for a rural peer-to-peer mobile ad hoc network. Our simulations identify the best choice of protocols under various village network conditions while simultaneously identifying limitations of the current protocols and suggestions for better performance.