Optimal Path Finding Using Sequential Intermediate Destinations and

Randomized Routing Algorithms

Harvey Ian Arbas1,2 a

, John Justine Villar1,2 b
1 Scientific Computing Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, University of the Philippines - Diliman, Philippines
2 Intelligent Transportation Systems Laboratory, National Center for Transportation Studies, Philippines
hsarbas@up.edu.ph, jsvillar1@up.edu.ph

Keywords: Randomized routing algorithms, Sequential intermediate destinations, Optimal path finding

Abstract: Routing algorithms are protocols which are most commonly used in efficiently directing internetwork traffic.
There are a number of deterministic and randomized routing algorithms proposed in existing literature, partic-
ularly in mobile ad hoc networks. In this paper, we take these routing algorithms and test their effectiveness
when implemented in road transport networks. Our simulation results show that internet routing protocols
are effective in finding an optimal path in a road network given an origin-destination pair, and a set of land-
mark nodes referred to as intermediate nodes. Results also show that implementing sector-based algorithms
significantly improves the path finding ability of these algorithms.

1 Introduction eler’s perspective the set of all possible paths from

Routing algorithms are step-by-step operations
used in directing internet traffic effectively and ef-
ficiently in a network or across multiple networks.
When a data packet leaves its source node, the rout-
ing algorithm determines which path to take to reach
its destination node. In wireless networks, a mobile
ad hoc network (MANET) is a collection of inter-
communicating mobile devices that do not need any
fixed infrastructure and can be represented by a graph,
where two nodes are connected if and only if their
Euclidean distance is at most a given unit disk radius
(Barrire, Fraigniaud, Narayanan, and Opatrny, 2003).
Several routing protocols have been devel-
oped and implemented for MANET; Deterministic
progress-based routing algorithms such as greedy
routing and compass/directional routing are known to
fail to deliver the packet in certain conditions (Karp
and Kung, 2000). To improve the delivery rates of
these algorithms, randomized algorithms were also
proposed (Fevens, Haque, and Narayanan, 2005).
In traffic and transportation, efforts have been
made to model route choice behavior. Route choice
behavior described in (Bovy, 2009) and (Bovy and
Stern, 1990) model route choice from the perspec-
tives of both traveler and modeler. From a trav-
a https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0586-7773
b https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1617-4518
origin to destination are filtered by the traveler’s
own perception, cognition, and idiosyncrasies (Bovy,
2009). These filters are simplified into constraints
which attempt to approximate the traveler’s tendency
to choose reasonable routes (Kaplan and Prato, 2012).
Bovy and Stern (1990) also defined a spatial restric-
tion and directionality of travel considering the desti-
nation. This space-time constraint commonly comes
in the form of an ellipse with the origin and destina-
tion nodes as its foci (Bovy and Stern, 1990).
An alternative perspective on the route choice pro-
cess for travelers incorporated the travelers’ behavior
to establish a mental map through perceiving, storing,
and remembering landmarks, referred to as anchor
points. These anchor points are treated as intermedi-
ate destinations by the traveler and are successively
reached until finally reaching the final destination,
thus a sequential approach to route choice (Gentile
and Papola, 2006). A method of generating these in-
termediate destinations was proposed using road hier-
archies as basis for computing a node’s nodal affinity
score (Carigma, Eden, Villar, and Valdez, 2019). This
node scoring method determines whether a node is a
strong candidate to be an intermediate destination for
a given road network.
This paper studies effectiveness of implementing
routing protocols, particularly the randomized rout-
ing algorithms, in conjunction with the elliptical and
sequential intermediate destinations models to deter-
mine an optimal path in a road transport network
given an origin node and a destination node. This
will be implemented in a hypothetical grid network
applied with the node scoring method.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Sec-
tion 2 presents relevant literature that were crucial
in the implementation of this study. In Section 3, a
detailed discussion of the simulation environment in
which the models were implemented is presented fol-
lowed by a summary and analysis of the results in
Section 4. Finally, conclusions and further research
directions are given in Section 5.
2 Related Literature
2.1 Routing algorithms
In interconnection networks, messages are sent from
one node to another through a path consisting of a se-
ries of network links. These paths are established by
routing algorithms. Routing algorithms can be clas-
sified according to several criteria (Duato, Yalaman-
chili, and Lionel, 2002):
Number of destinations Messages may have a sin-
gle destination (unicast routing) or multiple destina-
tions (multicast routing).
Routing decisions Routing decisions can be estab-
lished by a centralized controller (centralized rout-
ing), at the source node prior to packet injection
(source routing), or in a distributed manner (dis-
tributed routing). Hybrid schemes, called multiphase
routing, are also possible.
Implementation Routing algorithms can be imple-
mented using a routing table (table lookup) or execut-
ing according to a finite-state machine.
Adaptivity When choosing a path between a given
source/destination pair, routing algorithms may al-
ways output the same path (deterministic) or use in-
formation about the current network traffic to avoid
congested regions (adaptive).
Progressiveness Progressive routing algorithms al-
ways move the header forward as opposed to back-
tracking algorithms which allow the header to back-
track, releasing previously reserved channels.
Minimality Profitable/minimal routing algorithms
always give channel that bring the packet closer to its
destination while misrouting/nonminimal routing al-
gorithms also allow the packet to move away from its
destination.
Number of paths Routing algorithms may also be
classified according to the number of alternative paths
as either completely or partially adaptive.
2.2 Progress-based algorithms
Progressive routing algorithms, also called progress-
based algorithms, (Giordano and Stojmenovic, 2004),
forward the packet to a neighbor node, which is cho-
sen according to a specified heuristic. One type of
progress-based algorithm is the greedy routing where
a node forwards the packet to the neighbor closest to
the destination (Stojmenovic and Xu Lin, 2001; Finn,
1987). Compass or directional routing on the other
hand moves the packet to a neighboring node such
that the angle formed between the current node, next
node, and destination node is minimized (Kranakis,
Singh, and Urrutia, 1999). Clearly, the next node se-
lected by these two algorithms may not always be the
same (see Figure 1 for an example).
Figure 1: Greedy chooses E while Compass chooses F as
the next node. Lifted from (Fevens et al., 2005).
2.3 Randomized routing algorithms
Progress-based routing algorithms, both deterministic
and randomized were applied to mobile ad hoc net-
works. A routing algorithm is randomized if the next
node is chosen randomly out of the neighbors of the
current node (Bose and Morin, 1999). The study then
compared the algorithms’ performance in terms of de-
livery rate, the percentage of times that the algorithms
succeeds in finding a path, and stretch factor, the av-
erage ratio of the length of the path found by the algo-
rithm to the length of the shortest path in the network.
Two of the algorithms presented were deterministic.
Of the remaining seven randomized algorithms, three
were sector-based.
Given a node u, the disk centered at node u with
radius l is denoted by disk(u, l). Given an angle θ
such that 0 ≤ θ ≤ 2π, Sector(c, d, θ) is defined as the
sector given by the angle θ in disk(c, r) that is bisected
by the line segment cd (Fevens et al., 2005). Figure 2
shows an illustration of the definition of Sector.
Figure 2: Illustration of the definition of Sector. Lifted from
(Fevens et al., 2005).
GreedyInSector If Sector(c, d, θ) is not empty, the
next node x is chosen to be the neighbor of c having
minimum distance from d, in Sector(c, d, θ).
RandomInSector The next node x is chosen uni-
formlu at random from the first non-empty set in the
following sequence: Sector(c, d, θ1 ), Sector(c, d, θ2 ),
disk(c, r), where 0 ≤ θ1 ≤ θ2 ≤ 2π.
RCompass Let ∠xuy denote the angle formed by x,
u, and y measured counterclockwise. Let n1 be the
neighbor of c above the line cd such that ∠dcn1 = θ1
is the smallest among all such neighbors. Similarly,
n2 is the neighbor of c below cd such that ∠n2 cd =
θ2 is the smallest among all such neighbors. The next
node x is chosen uniformly at random from n1 and n2 .
WeightedRCompass Let n1 and n2 be the neigh-
bors of c as defined in RCompass. The next node x is
chosen from n1 and n2 with probability θ2 /(θ1 + θ2 )
and θ1 /(θ1 + θ2 ), respectively.
Best2Greedy Let n1 and n2 be the closest and sec-
ond closest neighbors of c to the destination d. The
next node is chosen uniformly at random out of these
two nodes.
Best2Compass Let n1 and n2 be the neighbors of
c such that ∠dcn1 (or ∠n1 cd) and ∠n2 cd (or ∠dcn2 )
are the two smallest such angles among all neighbors
of c. The next node is chosen uniformly at random
out of n1 and n2 .
FarInSector, another sector-based algo-
rithm which uses additional concepts such as
Periphery(c, d, θ, α),Core(c, d, θ, α), andWing(c, d, θ, α),
was not implemented in this study.
2.4 Detour factor
A transportation network can be reduced to a reason-
able subnetwork or a potential path area using an
elliptical construct as presented in (Ma, Leite Mari-
ante, and Van Acker, 2017). The study showed that
the boundary of the ellipse maintain a constant de-
tour factor, which is a measure of deviation from the
origin-destination axis. The detour factor, defined as
a+b
c , sets a threshold to limit the path taken by the
traveler. This is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Ellipse with origin o and destination d as the foci.
Lifted from (Ma et al., 2017).
2.5 Intermediate destinations
In a road network, a node is deemed more desir-
able if roads of higher hierarchy are directly acces-
sible since it provides the traveler more alternatives
to travel along faster corridors (Bovy, 2009). To im-
plement this, the concept of nodal affinity score was
introduced (Carigma et al., 2019). From the set of
all nodes excluding the origin node and destination
node, a subset of candidate intermediate nodes are se-
lected and given a nodal affinity score . This is the
score attributed to a node based on the hierarchy of
the links connected to it. A test network modeled as
 Table 1: Nodal affinity score and speed limit per road hierarchy (Carigma et al., 2019).
Road Hierarchy Nodal Affinity Score Road Speed Limit (kph)
Service Road 1.00 40
Residential Road 2.00 50
Tertiary Road 2.50 60
Secondary Road 2.83 70
Primary Road 3.08 80
Trunk 3.28 90
Motorway 3.45 100

a 2D graph with the edges representing roads of vary-
ing hierarchies was presented. A list of the road hier-
archies with their corresponding scores along with an
the speed limit associated with the road hierarchy was
also presented in the study (see Table 1).
3 Methodology
3.1 Simulation environment
(node labels start from the bottom-left at (0, 0)). Ori-
gin and destination nodes were fixed at (0, 0) and
(n − 1, n − 1) respectively for all runs. Finally, all
roads in the network were assigned random hierar-
chies.
After representing the given road transport net-
work as a nxn graph, a subraph containing the po-
tential path area described in Section 2.4 is gener-
ated. As in (Carigma et al., 2019), the detour fac-
tor was assumed to be an inverse function of the dis-
tance between the given origin and destination nodes,
instead of the corresponding travel time. Using the
method described in Section 2.5, nodal affinity scores
for each node were calculated. The set of candidate
intermeiate nodes was then generated by selecting the
200 top-scoring nodes. Figure 4 illustrates the graph
representing the road network, the ellipse determined
by the detour factor, and the set of candidate interme-
diate nodes for the given origin and destination nodes.

Figure 4: Road network represented as a graph. Origin and

destination nodes are colored blue, nodes inside the detour
factor are colored yellow, and candidate intermediate nodes
are colored green.

In the simulation experiments, a road network is

represented by a nxn grid where n ∈ {25, 50, 75, 100}.
Each edge in the graph represents a road, with edge
weight equal to the length of the road. For simplic-
ity, each road was assigned a length randomly cho-
sen from [1m, 10m]. Moreover, each node was as-
signed a label corresponding to its row and column
Figure 5: Optimal path generated by the algorithm is col-
ored red, actual shortest path is colored orange.
With the exception of FarInSector, all algorithms
discussed in Section 2.3 were implemented. However,
 Table 2: Average stretch factor and standard deviation, σ.
n = 25 n = 50 n = 75 n = 100
Algorithms ave. σ ave. σ ave. σ ave. σ
Greedy 1.09 0.06 1.13 0.09 2.83 3.27 7.67 3.59
GreedyInSector 1.09 0.06 1.13 0.09 1.19 0.03 1.25 0.08
RandomInSector 1.20 0.11 1.23 0.12 1.31 0.08 1.36 0.05
Compass 1.10 0.05 1.14 0.07 3.05 3.76 7.82 3.75
RCompass 1.64 0.84 3.49 2.23 6.38 3.09 8.78 2.71
WeightedRCompass 1.10 0.05 1.28 0.30 3.24 3.96 7.87 3.69
Best2Compass 1.11 0.06 1.14 0.09 2.91 3.44 8.41 3.92
Best2Greedy 1.12 0.07 1.16 0.08 3.05 3.68 7.18 3.87

some modifications to the algorithms were made. As
in (Fevens et al., 2005), transmission radius was ini-
tially set to 15m. In the event that an algorithm is un-
able to select the next intermediate node given its cur-
rent transmission radius, the radius is incremented by
one meter and the process of selecting the next node
is restarted. This step is repeated until the algorithm
successfully finds the next viable intermediate node.
This ensures that a path is found from the given origin
and destination pair. A shortest path is then generated
from the current node to the determined intermediate
node. The whole process is then repeated until the
destination node is reached. The optimal path is con-
catenated shortest paths generated by the algorithm.
Figure 5 illustrates the path given by the algorithm
and the actual shortest path in the network.
For each of the network sizes given, each algo-
rithm was ran 10 times. Average delivery rates and
average stretch factors were then computed. A tabu-
lation and interpretation of the results is presented in
the next section.
4.2 Average stretch factor
The average stretch factor of each algorithm is pre-
sented in Table 2. From the results we can clearly see
that the stretch factor for all the algorithms increases
as n increases. Moreover, the deterministic routing
algorithms (Greedy, GreedyInSector, and Compass)
performed better than the randomized algorithms in
general.
It is important to note that the sector-based routing
algorithms (GreedyInSector, RadnomInSector) per-
formed significantly better than all the non sector-
based algorithms, both deterministic and random-
ized, especially on networks having higher number of
nodes. This is because the Sector restricts the extent
to which the path strays away from the directoin of
the destination. Furthermore, the deterministic sector-
based GreedyInSector algorithm performed slightly
better than the randomized sector-based RandomIn-
Sector algorithm. A sample run of the GreedyInSec-
tor algorithm in different test networks is shown in
Figure 6.

4 Results and Discussion

We are interested in the performance of the algo-
rithms presented in the literature. In particular, we
want to see how each algorithm behaves as the num-
ber of nodes in the network increases.
4.1 Average delivery rate
In (Fevens et al., 2005), a run is considered success-
ful if a path from the origin to the destination is dis-
covered. However, since the modifications mentioned
above guarantees that a path is found, we are sure
to get 100% delivery rates for all implemented algo-
rithms. This result is justified on the basis that the
traveler should be able to reach their destination re-
gardless of how far the next intermediate destination
is from the current node.
5 Conclusion and Future Research
Directions
In this paper, we studied the effectiveness of im-
plementing routing protocols normally used in rout-
ing internet traffic into a road transport network in
determining an optimal path given an origin node, a
destination node, and a set of intermediate nodes. We
compared the performance of several deterministic
and randomized routing algorithms proposed in ex-
isting literature. In particular, we compared the path
determined by the algorithms with the actual shortest
path in the network by computing for its stretch fac-
tor. Results show that the value of the stretch factor
increases as the number of nodes in the network in-
creases. It was also found out that the sector-based al-
gorithms performed significantly better than their non
 (a) n = 25
(c) n = 75
Figure 6: Sample run using GreedyInSector in different nxn grid networks.
sector-based counterparts.
Finally, the results of this paper show that rout-
ing protocols can in fact be used in road transport
networks. We are now interested in the implementa-
tion of more routing protocols which can find optimal
paths with lower stretch factors.
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