Discovering stable routes in wireless networks
A method discovers routes for forwarding packets from source nodes (sources) to sink nodes (sinks) in a wireless network, wherein some neighboring sources act as relay nodes. Each source measures a rate of receiving control messages from each neighboring node. Then, the data packets are forwarded from a particular source to the sink via the neighboring nodes having a lowest rate.
1. A method for discovering routes to forward data packets from source nodes (sources) to sink nodes (sinks) in a wireless network, wherein some neighboring sources act as relay nodes, comprising the steps of:
measuring in each source, a rate of receiving control messages from each neighboring node, wherein the rate of receiving control messages (SI M ) from a neighboring node (M) is measured as a weighted-number of the control messages received within a sliding time window (T) from the neighboring node M according to
SI
M
=
W
DIS
×
C
DIS
M
+
W
DIO
×
C
DIO
M
+
W
DAO
×
C
DAO
M
T
,
wherein C DIO M is a number of Destination Oriented Directed Acyclic Graph (DODAG) Information Object (DIO) messages received from the neighboring node M, and C DAO M is a number of destination advertisement object (DAO) messages received from the neighboring node M, C DIS M is a number of DODAG Information Solicitation (DIS) messages received from the neighboring node M, and wherein W DIS , W DIO and W DAO are non-negative weights; and
forwarding the data packets from a particular source to a particular sink via the neighboring node having the lowest rate of receiving control messages.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the sliding time window has a fixed size, and newly received metadata overwrite old metadata when the sliding time window is full.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the sliding time window records metadata for a recent past time period.
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein each source includes a timer for updating the sliding time window.
5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
determine a rank for each source, wherein the rank is based on a stability index of the routes.
6. The method of claim 5 , further comprising:
forwarding the data packets from the particular source to the particular sink via the neighboring nodes having a lowest packet delivery rate and a lowest rank.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the rates of receiving control messages are measured dynamically when forwarding the data packets.
8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the rate of receiving control messages measures a stability of the sources.
9. The method of claim 1 , wherein sources and sinks are organized as a Destination Oriented Directed Acyclic Graph topology.
10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the wireless network is a low-power, lossy mesh network.