  Broadcast networks are often used in modern communication systems. A common
broadcast network is a single hop shared media system, where a transmitted
message is heard by all neighbors, such as some LAN networks. In this work we
consider a more complex environment, in which a transmitted message is heard
only by a group of neighbors, such as Ad-Hoc networks, satellite and radio
networks, as well as wireless multistation backbone system for mobile
communication. It is important to design efficient algorithms for such
environments. Our main result is a new Leader Election algorithm, with O(n)
time complexity and O(n*lg(n)) message transmission complexity. Our distributed
solution uses a propagation of information with feedback (PIF) building block
tuned to the broadcast media, and a special counting and joining approach for
the election procedure phase. The latter is required for achieving the linear
time. It is demonstrated that the broadcast model requires solutions which are
different from the known point-to-point model.
