Selection of a Forwarding Area for Contention-Based Geographic Forwarding in Wireless Multi-Hop Networks

Contention-based geographic forwarding (CGF) is a state-free forwarding technique. In this paper, we develop a general analytical framework to evaluate the performance of CGF with different forwarding areas in wireless multi-hop networks. In particular, we compare the performance of CGF for three typical forwarding areas, analytically and by extensive simulations. We further investigate the impact of several important assumptions on our analytical results. Our study provides guidelines regarding the selection of a specific forwarding area during the design phase of a CGF protocol. It also serves as a general performance evaluation framework for CGF protocols as well as traditional geographic forwarding protocols.