Source-tree routing in wireless networks

We present the source-tree adaptive routing (STAR) protocol and analyze its performance in wireless networks with broadcast radio links. Routers in STAR communicate to the neighbors their source routing trees either incrementally or in atomic updates. Source routing trees are specified by stating the link parameters of each link belonging to the paths used to reach every destination. Hence, a router disseminates link-state updates to its neighbors for only those links along paths used to reach destinations. Simulation results show that STAR is an order of magnitude more efficient than any topology-broadcast protocol, and four times more efficient than ALP, which was the most efficient table-driven routing protocol based on partial link-state information reported to date. The results also show that STAR is even more efficient than the dynamic source routing (DSR) protocol, which has been shown to be one of the best performing on-demand routing protocols.