An Improved Leader Election Protocol in Multi-hop Radio Networks

Abstract

This paper presents two randomized protocols for the problem of electing a "leader" among a set of nodes in an arbitrary multi-hop radio network. First, a variation of the leader election protocol by Bar-Yehuda et al. [BGI87] is presented, in which the termination problem is addressed. Then, an efficient randomized leader election protocol in arbitrary multi-hop radio networks is presented. Our election protocol is shown both analytically and experimentally to be asymptotically more efficient than previously known leaden election protocols for (almost) all networks. Also the protocol is much simpler than previously known leader election protocols.