The invention disclosed an improved partial dominant pruning method to broadcast packets in wireless ad hoc networks. The dominant pruning method involves a considered forwarding node constructing a universal set, consisting of neighbor nodes within two hops from the considered node. Pruning is then performed to reduce the size of the set. The following nodes are pruned from the set: nodes in the set of one-hop neighbors of the considered node; nodes in the set of one-hop neighbors of the previous hop of the considered node; and nodes in the set of one-hop neighbors of nodes that are common neighbors of both the considered node and its previous hop. Extra pruning is performed to remove nodes in the set of one-hop neighbors of nodes that are common neighbors of the considered node and another forwarding node of the same packet and previous hop, if the priority of the considered node is higher than the other forwarding node. The forwarding nodes are then selected using the greedy set cover algorithm and then the identity of the selected nodes are written on the packet’s header in a list called the forwarding node list.