Volcano Routing: A Multi-Pipe High-Throughput Routing Protocol with Hole Avoidance for Multi-Beam Directional Mesh Networks

摘要

The emergence of multi-beam directional antennas (MBDAs) has paved the way for fast and high-throughput data communications by providing concurrent multi-directional transmissions. However, the existing routing protocols are not capable of utilizing the advantages of MBDAs. In this paper, we have developed a new routing scheme, called volcano routing, which can exploit the concurrent packet dispatching capability of MBDAs for high-throughput data delivery. Its topology resembles the flow of volcano lava and several routing "pipes" are used, which can detour around the network "holes" or blocked areas. The routing process consists of two phases: 1) Main path search phase: There is a main path at the core of each pipe. Multiple optimal main paths are formed that have a high potential of adding side nodes to enable multi-beam communications. A hierarchical scoring system and the performance metrics are used to evaluate the quality of the main paths. 2) Volcano establishment phase: The top-quality main paths are selected, and side paths are formed around each main path to establish the volcano pipes. A multi-beam traffic scheduling and dispatching policy is also proposed to achieve better performance. Our results show that the volcano routing scheme can exploit the advantages of MBDAs for achieving high data rates.