Broadcasting and querying multi-dimensional index trees in a multi-channel environment

The continuous broadcast of data together with an index structure is an effective way of disseminating data in a wireless, mobile environment. The availability of an index allows a reduction in the tuning time and thus leads to lower power consumption for a mobile client. This paper considers scheduling index trees in multiple channel environments in which a mobile client can tune into a specified channel at one time instance. Let T be an n-node index tree of height h representing multi-dimensional index structure to be broadcast in a c  -channel environment. We describe two algorithms generating broadcast schedules that differ in the worst-case performance experienced by a client executing a general query. A general query is a query which results in an arbitrary traversal of the index tree, compared to a simple query in which a single path is traversed. Our first algorithm schedules any tree using minimum cycle length and it executes a simple query within one cycle. However, a general query may require O(hc)O(hc) cycles and thus result in a high latency. The second algorithm generates a schedule of minimum cycle length on which a general query takes at most O(c)O(c) cycles. For some queries this is the best possible latency.