Trajectory Based Forwarding And Its Applications

Abstract

Trajectory based forwarding (TBF) is a novel methodto forward packets in a dense ad hoc network that makes it possible to route a packet along a predefined curve. It is a hybrid between source based routing and Cartesian forwarding in that the trajectory is set by the source, but the forwarding decision is based on the relationship to the trajectory rather than names of intermediate nodes. The fundamental aspects of TBF are: it decouples path naming from the actual path; it provides cheap path diversity; it trades off communication for computation. These aspects address the double scalability issue with respect to mobility rate and network size. In addition, TBF provides a common framework for many services such as: broadcasting, discovery, unicast, multicast and multipath routing in ad hoc networks. TBF requires that nodes know their position relative to a coordinate system. While a global coordinate system afforded by a system such as GPS would be ideal, approximate positioning methods provided by other algorithms are also usable.