Distributed heuristics for connected dominating sets in wireless ad hoc networks

A connected dominating set (CDS) for a graph G(V, E) is a subset V' of V, such that each node in V - V' is adjacent to some node in V', and V' induces a connected subgraph. CDSs have been proposed as a virtual backbone for routing in wireless ad hoc networks. However, it is NP-hard to find a minimum connected dominating set (MCDS). An approximation algorithm for MCDS in general graphs has been proposed in the literature with performance guarantee of 3 + In Δ where Δ is the maximal nodal degree [1]. This algorithm has been implemented in distributed manner in wireless networks [2]-[4]. This distributed implementation suffers from high time and message complexity, and the performance ratio remains 3 + In Δ. Another distributed algorithm has been developed in [5], with performance ratio of Θ(n). Both algorithms require two-hop neighborhood knowledge and a message length of Ω (Δ). On the other hand, wireless ad hoc networks have a unique geometric nature, which can be modeled as a unit-disk graph (UDG), and thus admits heuristics with better performance guarantee. In this paper we propose two destributed heuristics with constant performance ratios. The time and message complexity for any of these algorithms is O(n), and O(n log n), respectively. Both of these algorithms require only single-hop neighborhood knowledge, and a message length of O (1).