Landmark selection and greedy landmark-descent routing for sensor networks

We study the problem of landmark selection for landmark-based routing in a network of fixed wireless communication nodes. We present a distributed landmark selection algorithm that does not rely on global clock synchronization, and a companion local greedy landmark-based routing scheme. We assume no node location information, and that each node can communicate with some of its geographic neighbors. Each node is named by its hop count distances to a small number of nearby landmarks. Greedy routing at a node is performed to equalize its vector of landmark distances to that of the destination. This is done by following the shortest path to the landmark that maximizes the ratio of its distances to the source and the destination. In addition, we propose a method to alleviate the difficulty in routing to destinations near the boundaries by virtually expanding the network boundaries. The greedy routing, when combined with our landmark selection scheme, has a provable bounded path stretch relative to the best path possible, and guarantees packet delivery in the continuous domain. In the discrete domain, our simulations show that the landmark selection scheme is effective, and the companion routing scheme performs well under realistic settings. Both the landmark selection and greedy routing assumes no specific communication model and works with asymmetric links. Although some of the analysis are non-trivial, the algorithms are simple, flexible and cost-effective enough to warrant a real-world deployment.