Reducing Redundant Data Transmissions in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks: Comparing Aggregation and Filtering 1

Abstract—Efficient bandwidth usage is vital for real-time ad hoc networking applications like vehicular safety. Yet, such applications can produce large amounts of identical data. Pruning redundant data transmissions can enable delivering richer data to more users at shorter intervals. Reducing redundancy has been studied extensively for stable network topologies but the solutions are not directly extensible to dynamic topologies where information about network state obsolesces quickly. We compare two novel combinations of the adaptive controlled flooding routing protocol, SBSD, with implementations of response aggregation and query filtering for mobile environments. We test these combinations in simulated vehicular networks. We show that, even in cases where response aggregation only slightly improves network performance, query filtering can improve delivery by up to 30% and response time by 75%.