On the maximum performance in opportunistic routing

In recent years there has been a growing interest in Opportunistic Routing as a way to increase the capacity of wireless networks by exploiting its broadcast nature. By contrast to traditional uni-path routing, in opportunistic routing the nodes overhearing neighbor's transmissions can become candidates to forward the packets towards the destination. In this paper we address the question: What is the maximum performance that can be obtained using opportunistic routing? To answer this question we use an analytical model that allows to compute the optimal position of the nodes, such that the progress towards the destination is maximized. We use this model to compute bounds to the minimum expected number of transmissions that can be achieved in a network using opportunistic routing.