All too often a seemingly insurmountable divide between theory and practice can be witnessed. In this paper we try to contribute to narrowing this gap in the field of ad-hoc routing. In particular we consider two aspects: We propose a new geometric routing algorithm which is outstandingly e#cient on practical average-case networks, however is also in theory asymptotically worst-case optimal. On the other hand we are able to drop the formerly necessary assumption that the distance between network nodes may not fall below a constant value, an assumption that cannot be maintained for practical networks. Abandoning this assumption we identify from a theoretical point of view two fundamentamentally di#erent classes of cost metrics for routing in ad-hoc networks.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of small nodes with sensing, computation, and wireless communications capabilities. Many routing, power management, and data dissemination protocols have been specifically designed for WSNs where energy awareness is an essential design issue. The focus, however, has been given to the routing protocols which might differ depending on the application and network architecture. In this paper, we present a survey of the state-of-the-art routing techniques in WSNs. We first outline the design challenges for routing protocols in WSNs followed by a comprehensive survey of different routing techniques. Overall, the routing techniques are classified into three categories based on the underlying network structure: flat, hierarchical, and location-based routing. Furthermore, these protocols can be classified into multipath-based, query-based, negotiation-based, QoS-based, and coherent-based depending on the protocol operation. We study the design tradeoffs between energy and communication overhead savings in every routing paradigm. We also highlight the advantages and performance issues of each routing technique. The paper concludes with possible future research areas. 1

In this paper we study a model for ad-hoc networks close enough to reality as to represent existing networks, being at the same time concise enough to promote strong theoretical results. The Quasi Unit Disk Graph model contains all edges shorter than a parameter d between 0 and 1 and no edges longer than 1. We show that -- in comparison to the cost known on Unit Disk Graphs -- the complexity results in this model contain the additional factor 1/d². We prove that in Quasi Unit Disk Graphs flooding is an asymptotically message-optimal routing technique, provide a geometric routing algorithm being more efficient above all in dense networks, and show that classic geometric routing is possible with the same performance guarantees as for Unit Disk Graphs if d 1/ # 2.

Recent experimental studies have shown that wireless links in real sensor networks can be extremely unreliable, deviating to a large extent from the idealized perfect-receptionwithin-range models used in common network simulation tools. Previously proposed geographic routing protocols commonly employ a maximum-distance greedy forwarding technique that works well in ideal conditions. However, such a forwarding technique performs poorly in realistic conditions as it tends to forward packets on lossy links. We identify and illustrate this weak-link problem and the related distancehop trade-off, whereby energy efficient geographic forwarding must strike a balance between shorter, high-quality links, and longer lossy links. The study is done for scenarios with and without automatic repeat request (ARQ). Based on an analytical link loss model, we study the distance-hop trade-off via mathematical analysis and extensive simulations of a wide array of blacklisting/link-selection strategies; we also validate some strategies using a set of real experiments on motes. Our analysis, simulations and experiments all show that the product of the packet reception rate (PRR) and the distance traversed towards destination is the optimal forwarding metric for the ARQ case, and is a good metric even without ARQ. Nodes using this metric often take advantage of neighbors in the transitional region (high-variance links). Our results also show that receptionbased forwarding strategies are more efficient than purely distance-based strategies; relative blacklisting schemes reduce disconnections and achieve higher delivery rates than absolute blacklisting schemes; and that ARQ schemes become more important in larger networks.

We propose a novel localized algorithm that constructs a bounded degree and planar spanner for wireless ad hoc networks modeled by unit disk graph (UDG). Every node only has to know its 2-hop neighbors to find the edges in this new structure. Our method applies the Yao structure on the local Delaunay graph [21] in an ordering that are computed locally. This new structure has the following attractive properties: (1) it is a planar graph; (2) its node degree is bounded from above by a positive constant 19 + ⌈ 2π α ⌉; (3) it is a t-spanner (given any two nodes u and v, there is a path connecting them in the structure such that its length is no more than t ≤ max { π α,πsin 2 2 +1}·Cdel times of the shortest path in UDG); (4) it can be constructed locally and is easy to maintain when the nodes move around; (5) moreover, we show that the total communication cost is O(n), where n is the number of wireless nodes, and the computation cost of each node is at most O(d log d), where d is its 2-hop neighbors in the original unit disk graph. Here Cdel is the spanning ratio of the Delaunay triangulation, which is at most 4 √ 3 9 π. And the adjustable parameter α satisfies 0 <α<π/3. In addition, experiments are conducted to show this topology is efficient in practice, compared with other well-known topologies used in wireless ad hoc networks. Previously, only centralized method [5] of constructing bounded degree planar spanner is known, with degree bound 27 and spanning ratio t ≃ 10.02. The distributed implementation of their centralized method takes O(n 2) communications in the worst case. No localized methods were known previously for constructing bounded degree planar spanner.

An effective approach for energy conservation in wireless sensor networks is scheduling sleep intervals for extraneous nodes, while the remaining nodes stay active to provide continuous service. For the sensor network to operate successfully, the active nodes must maintain both sensing coverage and network connectivity. Furthermore, the network must be able to configure itself to any feasible degrees of coverage and connectivity in order to support different applications and environments with diverse requirements. This paper presents the design and analysis of novel protocols that can dynamically configure a network to achieve guaranteed degrees of coverage and connectivity. This work differs from existing connectivity or coverage maintenance protocols in several key ways: 1) We present a Coverage Configuration Protocol (CCP) that can provide different degrees of coverage requested by applications. This flexibility allows the network to self-configure for a wide range of applications and (possibly dynamic) environments. 2) We provide a geometric analysis of the relationship between coverage and connectivity. This analysis yields key insights for treating coverage and connectivity within a unified framework: this is in sharp contrast to several existing approaches that address the two problems in isolation. 3) We integrate CCP with SPAN to provide both coverage and connectivity guarantees. 4) We propose a probabilistic coverage model and extend CCP to provide probabilistic coverage guarantees. We demonstrate the capability of our protocols to provide guaranteed coverage and connectivity configurations, through both geometric analysis and extensive simulations.

In the absence of location errors, geographic routing- using a combination of greedy forwarding and face routing- has been shown to work correctly and efficiently. The effects of location errors on geographic routing have not been studied before. In this work we provide a detailed analysis of the effects of location errors on the correctness and performance of geographic routing in static sensor networks. First, we perform a micro-level behavioral analysis to identify the possible protocol error scenarios and their conditions and bounds. Then, we present results from an extensive simulation study of GPSR and GHT to quantify the performance degradation due to location errors. Our results show that even small location errors (of 10 % of the radio range or less) can in fact lead to incorrect (non-recoverable) geographic routing with noticeable performance degradation. We then introduce a simple modification for face routing that eliminates probable errors and leads to near perfect performance.

The XTC ad-hoc network topology control algorithm introduced in this paper shows three main advantages over previously proposed algorithms. First, it is extremely simple and strictly local. Second, it does not assume the network graph to be a Unit Disk Graph; XTC proves correct also on general weighted network graphs. Third, the algorithm does not require availability of node position information. Instead, XTC operates with a general notion of order over the neighbors' link qualities. In the special case of the network graph being a Unit Disk Graph, the resulting topology proves to have bounded degree, to be a planar graph, and---on average-case graphs---to be a good spanner.

Coping with mobility and dynamism is one of the biggest challenges in ad hoc networks. An essential requirement for such networks is a service that can establish communication sessions between mobile nodes whose location is unknown. A location service for ad hoc networks is a distributed algorithm that allows any source node s to know the location of any destination node t, simply by knowing t's network identifier.

It was recently reported that all known face and combined greedy-face routing variants cannot guarantee message delivery in arbitrary undirected planar graphs. The purpose of this article is to clarify that this is not the truth in general. We show that specifically in relative neighborhood and Gabriel graphs recovery from a greedy routing failure is always possible without changing between any adjacent faces. Guaranteed delivery then follows from guaranteed recovery while traversing the very first face. In arbitrary graphs, however, a proper face selection mechanism is of importance since recovery from a greedy routing failure may require visiting a sequence of faces before greedy routing can be restarted again. A prominent approach is to visit a sequence of faces which are intersected by the line connecting the source and destination node. Whenever encountering an edge which is intersecting with this line, the critical part is to decide if face traversal has to change to the next adjacent one or not. Failures may occur from incorporating face routing procedures that force to change the traversed face at each intersection. Recently observed routing failures which were produced by the GPSR protocol in arbitrary planar graphs result from incorporating such a face routing variant. They cannot be constructed by the well known GFG algorithm which does not force changing the face anytime. Beside methods which visit the faces intersected by the source destination line, we discuss face routing variants which simply restart face routing whenever the next face has to be explored. We give the first complete and formal proofs that several proposed face routing, and combined greedyface routing schemes do guarantee delivery in specific graph classes or even any arbitrary planar graphs. We also discuss the reasons why other methods may fail to deliver a message or even end up in a loop.