Census: Fast, scalable and robust data aggregation in MANETs

Abstract: This paper describes Census, a protocol for data aggregation and statistical counting in MANETs. Census operates by circulating a set of tokens in the network using biased random walks such that each node is visited by at least one token. The protocol is structure-free so as to avoid high messaging overhead for maintaining structure in the presence of node mobility. It biases the random walks of tokens so as to achieve fast cover time; the bias involves short albeit multi-hop gradients that guide the tokens towards hitherto unvisited nodes. Census thus achieves a cover time of O(N/k) and message overhead of O(Nlog(N)/k) where N is the number of nodes and k the number of tokens in the network. Notably, it enjoys scalability and robustness, which we demonstrate via simulations in networks ranging from 100 to 4000 nodes under different network densities and mobility models.