Reliable broadcasting for safety services in dense infrastructureless peer-aware communications

The IEEE 802.15.8 project has introduced peer-aware communication (PAC) as a promising technology enabling high-quality proximity services in dense infrastrutureless ad hoc environments. PAC applications cover a variety of high-assurance services, especially those related to safety such as hazard alerts, emergency exit guidance, and relative position in cases where networking facilities have been destroyed or unavailable. To support these services effectively, PAC must overcome the massive device density to provide a reliable broadcast protocol for rapidly disseminating urgent information across the entire network. As such, we propose a reliable rumor broadcast (RRB) scheme for safety services in a dense infrastructureless PAC network. The proposed RRB scheme takes advantage of neighboring relations among PAC devices (PDs) to broadcast rumor abstract information instead of transmitting heavy broadcast frames. The broadcast frames are only forwarded based on requests from neighboring PDs. In the RRB scheme, rumor frames aim to reduce the broadcasting overhead, while the use of neighboring relations ensures reliable communications across the entire network. Simulation analysis demonstrates that the proposed RRB scheme achieves outstanding performance compared with that of existing algorithms in terms of overhead reduction and energy efficiency while maintaining a better transmission reliability improvement.