GEOGRAPHIC ROUTING

Namitha T.N
Lecturer in Computer Science and Engineering
JECC
namitatn@gmail.com

Routing is the process of selecting paths in a network along which to send

network traffic. Routing is performed for many kinds of networks, including the
telephone network, electronic data networks (such as the Internet), and transportation
(transport) networks…In some networks, routing is complicated by the fact that no single
entity is responsible for selecting paths: instead, multiple entities are involved in selecting
paths or even parts of a single path…A routing protocol is a protocol that specifies how
routers communicate with each other to disseminate information that allows them to
select routes between any two nodes on a network. In internetworking, the process of
moving a packet of data from source to destination. Routing is usually performed by a
dedicated device called a router. Routing is a key feature of the Internet because it
enables messages to pass from one computer to another and eventually reach the target
machine. Each intermediary computer performs routing by passing along the message to
the next computer. Part of this process involves analyzing a routing table to determine
the best path. Routing is often confused with bridging, which performs a similar function.
The principal difference between the two is that bridging occurs at a lower level and is
therefore more of a hardware function whereas routing occurs at a higher level where the
software component is more important. And because routing occurs at a higher level, it
can perform more complex analysis to determine the optimal path for the packet.
A routing table is a set or rules, viewed in a tabular format and this used to define
the routes of the data packets. All the network devices, which have IP, enabled
functionality such as routers and switches use the routing tables. Routing table stores the
information and configurations of every router in the IP enabled network. A routing table
contains the information necessary to transmit the packets toward its destination. When a
packet is received, the network devices matches the information contained in the packets
and the information in the routing tables and then it defines the shortest possible route for
the transmission of the packets towards its destination. Each packet contains the
information of its origin and destination and the routing table contains the following
information.

• Destination: The IP address of the packet’s final destination (next hop). Next hop: The
IP address to which the packet is forwarded

• Metric: It assigns the cost to each route so that most-effective paths can be picked up.

• Routes: It includes directly attached direct subnets, indirect subnets, that are not directly

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connected to the device but it can be accesses through one ore more hops
• Interface: The outgoing network interface the device should use when forwarding the
packet to its final destination.

Geographic routing (also called georouting or position-based routing) is a

routing principle that relies on geographic position information. It is mainly proposed for
wireless networks and based on the idea that the source sends a message to the
geographic location of the destination instead of using the network address. The idea of
using position information for routing was first proposed in the 1980s in the area of
packet radio networks and interconnection networks .Geographic routing requires that
each node can determine its own location and that the source is aware of the location of
the destination. With this information a message can be routed to the destination without
knowledge of the network topology or a prior route discovery. Geographic routing
protocol use the location information to progressively forward packets through the
physical space toward the destination location with intermediate next hop routing
decisions based on selecting the neighbor that has the closest distance compass setting or
some other measure of forward progress toward the destination. This process termed
geographic forwarding.

Geographic routing (or position-based routing) uses location information for

packet delivery in multihop wireless networks Neighbors locally exchange location
information obtained through GPS (Global Positioning System) or other location
determination techniques. Since nodes locally select next hop nodes did not base on this
neighborhood information and the destination location, route establishment nor is per-
destination state required in geographic routing. As large-scale sensor networks become
more feasible, properties such as stateless nature and low maintenance overhead make
geographic routing increasingly more attractive. Also, location-based services such as
geocasting can be best realized using geographic routing. The most popular strategy for
geographic routing is simply for warding data packets to the neighbor geographically
closest to the destination. Although this greedy method is effective in many cases,
packets may get routed to where no neighbor is closer to the destination than the current
node. Many recovery schemes have been proposed to route around such voids for
guaranteed packet delivery as long as a path exists. These techniques typically exploit
planar sub graphs (i.e., Gabriel graph, Relative Neighborhood graph), and packets
traverse faces on such graphs using the well-known right-hand rule. Most geographic
routing protocols use one-hop information, but generalization to two-hop neighborhood is
also possible.

ADVANTAGES OF GEOGRAPHIC ROUTING:

Geographic routing protocol offers a number of advantages over conventional ad-

hoc routing strategies. Geographic forwarding does not require maintenance of routing
tables or route construction prior to or during the forwarding process. The forwarding
process also allows a packet to adapt to changes in the topology by selecting the next best
choice if an intermediate node used by previous packets becomes unavailable. Without
the need for route construction these approaches do not require table maintenance other
than immediate neighbors nor dissemination of topology information

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PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH GEOGRAPHIC ROUTING:

The complexity and overhead required for a distributed location database service
is a disadvantage of geographic routing. The dependence of geographic forwarding on the
physical network topology means that obstacles such as a building or the lack of radio
coverage may result in voids in the physical network topology. These voids may inhibit
forward progress of packets local minima where there are no neighbors available that are
closer to the destination resulting in the failure of the forwarding strategy.

GEOGRPHIC ROUTING PROTOCOLS

A routing protocol is a protocol that specifies how routers communicate with

each other to disseminate information that allows them to select routes between any two
nodes on a network. Typically, each router has a priori knowledge only of its directly
attached networks. A routing protocol shares this information successively, first among
immediate neighbors and then throughout the entire network. This way routers can gain
knowledge of the network topology at large.
Geographic routing protocol based primarily on a forwarding strategy and
secondarily in a recovery strategy.There are various approaches, such as single-path,
multi-path and flooding-based strategies. Most single-path strategies rely on two
techniques: greedy forwarding and face routing. Greedy forwarding tries to bring the
message closer to the destination in each step using only local information. Thus, each
node forwards the message to the neighbor that is most suitable from a local point of
view. The most suitable neighbor can be the one who minimizes the distance to the
destination in each step (Greedy). Alternatively, one can consider another notion of
progress, namely the projected distance on the source-destination-line (MFR, NFP), or
the minimum angle between neighbor and destination (Compass Routing). Not all of
these strategies are loop-free, i.e. a message can circulate among nodes in a certain
constellation. It is known that the basic greedy strategy and MFR are loop free, while
NFP and Compass Routing are not. The main types of routing protocols associated with
geographic routing are

• Random progress method

• Most forward with fixed radius R
• Nearest with forward progress NFP
• Greedy forwarding
• Location aided routing LAR
• Distance routing effect algorithm for mobility DREAM
• Compass Routing
• Geographic Distance Routing GEDIR
• Depth first search with Dominant sets
• GPSR
• GFG Sooner back
• Geographic routing algorithm GRA
• Terminode Routing

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 • Terminode Local Routing
• Scalable Location Update Based Routing Protocol SLURP
• Adaptive Face Routing
• Beaconles Routing
• Exponential Age search EASE

Random progress method Forwards packets to a random neighbor from among those
that are closer to the destination. The random selection of the next hop was suggested to
provide an even distribution of traffic load.
Most forward with fixed radius R Forwards packets to the neighbor within a set radius
of the current node that makes the most forward progress (or the least forward progress)
along the line drawn from the current node to the destination. Progress is calculated as the
cosine of the distance from the current node to the neighbor projected back onto the line
from the current node to the destination...
The nearest with forward Progress (NFP). This strategy forwards a packet to the
closest neighbor in the forward direction. The current node then modifies it’s transmit
power to suit the connection. This results in higher delivery rates due to reduce
interference and contention at the cost of increased hop count.
Greedy forwarding: Greedy forwarding which selects the next hop as the node closes to
the destination. The greedy approach unlike MFR allows a packet to move to a node i.e.
beyond the destination if that node is closer to the destination than the previous node.
5. Location-Aided Routing (LAR) and Distance Routing Effect Algorithm for Mobility
(DREAM) focus on ad-hoc networking environments. LAR is an on-demand routing
protocol that uses the last known position of the destination node and its velocity to limit
the flooding of routing requests toward the destination. Flooding is limited to an area
between the source and a circle, calculated around the destination, with its center at the
last known position and a radius, which is determined by the nodes velocity. This
improves the efficiency of the underlying on-demand protocol but still suffers the
problem of scalability and latency associated with on-demand strategies. DREAM is
based on the flooding of data without the prior establishment of a route. Messages are
flooded into an area that is limited in a similar manner to that used in LAR. However, the
use of directional flooding of data packets, as opposed to flooding of route requests in
LAR, may still incur a significant bandwidth overhead.

Compass Routing (DIR) a variation on forwarding based on the direction for routing
decisions are proposed. In this strategy, packets are forwarded to the neighbor on the
closest compass setting to the destination. DIR has the disadvantage that it is susceptible
to looping and does not guarantee a delivery. To guarantee a delivery, face traversal of
disjoint regions was proposed, where a packet is forwarded around one side of each face
until the packet reaches the further edge of the face that intersects the line from the source
to the destination. From this point the packet traverse the next face in a similar manner
until the destination is reached.

Geographic Distance Routing (GEDIR) adopts the Greedy strategy proposed by Finn,
where packets are forwarded to the neighbor closest to the destination. To allow a packet
to move through the local minima, GEDIR does not include the current node in the

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distance calculation and permits a packet to be sent in the reverse direction if no forward
node is available. To prevent looping the packet is not permitted to be passed from the
neighbor back to the previous node. This addresses single- hope looping, but packet may
loop back via an alternate path. Two variations of GEDIR were proposed to address the
problem. These include flooding at the local minimum (f-GEDIR) and maintaining 2-hop
neighbor information to predict and avoid the local minima. F-GEDIR is found to be
effective at the expense of increased control overhead, whereas 2-hop GEDIR was an
improvement but still allows loops of 2+hops. A multipath version c-GEDIR is also
proposed to add reliability.
FACE-2 algorithm extracts a connected planar sub graph by converting the network
topology to a Gabriel graph. FACE-2 has the advantage that it guarantees delivery in a
connected static graph, although it does not provide the optimal path and also requires a
unit graph with equal transmission radii for planar graph conversion. Greedy Forward
Greedy (GFG) was proposed, which incorporates both GEDIR (Greedy forwarding) for
routing and FACE-2 (planar graph traversal) to recover when Greedy forwarding
encounters the local minima.
Depth-First Search with Dominant Sets uses greedy forwarding. When route failure
occurs, the packet backtracks to the previous node, which forwards the packet to the next
closest neighbor to the destination. To reduce the number of nodes involved in routing
and thus reduce the number of hopes involved in route determination, routing is restricted
to the dominant set until the destination is known to the current node.
GPSR is a packet-switched routing protocol implementation of GFG using Greedy
forwarding and planar graph traversal. Nodes are only required to maintain 1-hop
neighbor location information that is exchanged using periodic beacons. Packets are first
transmitted with a mode flag set to Greedy. When the local minima is reached, the flag is
changed to the perimeter mode, and a face traversal algorithm is used until Greedy
forwarding can be resumed. Packets are not permitted to traverse an edge previously
traversed to ensure that the packet does not loop.
GFG-sooner-back (GFG-s) algorithm, Data et al proposed improvements to reduce the
hop counts in GFG. First, FACE-2 is modified by introducing 2-hop neighbor
information to determine if there is a closer node to the destination, which will allow the
packet to exit the FACE mode earlier than in the previous FACE-2. Second, GFG-s was
proposed to use a shortcut procedure involving 2-hop neighbor information to check for a
shorter path than that provided by the immediate neighbor. The number of hops is further
reduced by using the dominant set to minimize the nodes involved in route determination.
Geographic Routing Algorithm (GRA) initially uses a Greedy forwarding strategy to
forward packets to the neighbor closest to the destination. When local minima are
reached, a depth-first search route discovery process is initiated to find a path to the
destination. Nodes cache the routing information and progressively build up routing
tables from the discovery procedures. These tables are then used in place of geographic
forwarding when the cached route information is available.
Terminode Routing focuses on large-scale networks and uses a hybrid approach to
routing. Terminode Local Routing (TLR) maintains distance vector routing tables within
a set radius of a node. Terminode Remote Routing (TRR) uses a set of anchor points or
waypoints to route packets through the network. Anchors are established through a
discovery procedure in conjunction with cached anchors from “friend” nodes that are

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considered reliable. After the anchor points for a destination have been discovered, the
list of anchor point vectors is inserted into the packet header, and the packet is forwarded
progressively though the list by using geographic forwarding. When a node is reached,
which has a distance vector entry for the destination, the local information is used to
complete the route.
Scalable Location Update Based Routing Protocol SLURP incorporates location
management which divides a geographical area into rectangular regions called home
regions. Each node in the network maintains a location table that maps the node ID to the
corresponding home area ID for all other nodes in the network. SLURP forward packets
to the centre of Homeregion by using MFR without backward progression.
Adaptive Face Routing (AFR) is based upon the face traversal of a planar graph. To
optimize routing, AFR incorporates FACE and Bounded Face Routing (BFR) which
places a bound on the face traversal defined by an ellipse with the foci at the source and
destination. The size of the bound is initially estimated, and then, if BFR fails and the
packet returns to the source, the bound is doubled and the BFR process is repeated.
Beaconless Routing (BLR) does not assume that nodes have information regarding
neighboring nodes and eliminate beaconing, which is typically used to maintain
adjacency tables in other geographic routing protocols in the basic routing mode, a node
broadcasts a packet with its location and the destination location. Only nodes that determine
that they are within a 60-degree sector from the previous node to the destination consider
forwarding the packet. Each of these nodes delays transmission, depending on the
progress that the node makes toward the destination. When the node closest node
transmits after the minimum delay, the other candidates detect the transmission, are
thereby informed that the packet has been forwarded successfully, and drop the packet.
Exponential Age Search (EASE) and Greedy EASE (GREASE) use node mobility to
disseminate node location information based on the time and location of the last
encounter with each of the other nodes in the network. EASE uses Last Encounter
Routing (LER), in which surrounding nodes are searched in an increasing radius until a
node is found, whose last encounter with the destination is less than or equal to half the
time of the current nodes last encounter with the destination. This nodes location is then
used as a waypoint for routing (although no specific routing strategy is specified). In
GREASE, if a node is encountered with a more recent estimate of the destination location
than the waypoint, then that location becomes the new waypoint.

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References

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/r/routing.htmlh
http://www.cs.ucla.edu/classes/fall03/cs218/paper/p96-
rao.pdfttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_routing
http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/slee/pubs/nadv-mobihoc05.pdf
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/
http://enl.usc.edu/papers/cache/cldp_nsdi05.pdf