Reliable Broadcasting Without Collision Detection

We propose a dynamic, ad-hoc communication network consisting of mobile units that can warn about traffic jams on motorways. Our goal is to provide a practical, low cost solution. Therefore we consider very simple wireless communication hardware, without collision detection, with very small bandwidth and a probabilistic model of link failure. We provide a complete system architecture. For this purpose we design and analyze solutions for size approximation, leader election and broadcasting. Our algorithms are fine-tuned for fast operation in a practical setting. We provide both a theoretical and experimental evaluation of our solutions. Our contribution is much different from the previous work, where either pure theoretical models with a pure theoretical analysis are provided or algorithms working in practical models are evaluated only through simulations.