Robust Geo-Routing on Embeddings of Dynamic Wireless Networks

Wireless routing based on an embedding of the connectivity graph is a very promising technique to overcome shortcomings of geographic routing and topology-based routing. This is of particular interest when either absolute coordinates for geographic routing are unavailable or when they poorly reflect the underlying connectivity in the network. We focus on dynamic networks induced by time-varying fading and mobility. This requires that the embedding is stable over time, whereas the focus of most existing embedding algorithms is on low distortion of single realizations of a graph. We develop a beacon-based distributed embedding algorithm that requires little control overhead, produces low distortion embeddings, and is stable. We also show that a low-dimensional embedding suffices, since at a sufficiently large scale, wireless connectivity graphs are dictated by geometry. The stability of the embedding allows us to combine geo-routing on the embedding with last encounter routing (LER) for node lookup, further reducing the control overhead. Our routing algorithm avoids dead ends through randomized greedy forwarding. We demonstrate through extensive simulations that our combined embedding and routing scheme outperforms existing algorithms.