ProgressFace: An Algorithm to Improve Routing Efficiency of GPSR-Like Routing Protocols in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

In GPSR-like routing, such as GPSR, GFG, GOAFR+, and GPVFR, perimeter forwarding is used to recover from a greedy forwarding failure by routing the packet to a progress node along the face boundary. The problem of perimeter forwarding is that many hops may be taken if the packet is forwarded in the wrong direction. We propose an algorithm, termed ProgressFace, that uses an additional traversal step to decide the direction of perimeter forwarding. A concave node sends a short packet to traverse the face boundary to identify the progress set, which consists of at most four nodes, such that, for any destination, at least one progress node is in the progress set or the neighbor set. Additionally, the hop distances of the nodes in the progress set along both directions are evaluated so that the shorter one is identified. The following packets encountering the concave node each are then sent along the corresponding direction toward the progress node in the progress set or the neighbor set. Simulations show that GPSR, GFG, GOAFR+, and GPVFR each conduct a shorter routing path, if augmented with the ProgressFace algorithm.