Definition and evaluation of a trellis structure for self-organized networks

Self organized networks (SONs) are a general description of autonomous networks, of which ad hoc and sensor networks are special cases. Lack of infrastructure, limited resources and dynamic nature of nodes are some of the main characteristics of such networks. We had previously proposed a novel clustering architecture for SONs that utilizes a fixed description of cluster routing tables. The architecture uses trellis graphs, a concept borrowed from the domain of source coding, to provide addressing/locating and routing capabilities for the SON. The choice of a trellis graph (and its parameters) to represent a particular SON is not unique; moreover, as expected, it introduces overhead. In this paper we focus our study on a thorough examination of the effects of this choice on the control and data plane operations of the network. In a nutshell, we show that increasing the trellis size reduces control plane overhead significantly; on the other hand, increasing the trellis size has a mixed effect on data plane performance