Dynamic Data Forwarding in Wireless Mesh Networks

Unreliable wireless links can cause frequent link (and route) failures, creating a major challenge for routing protocols who need to constantly repair routes and find alternate paths. In this paper we propose DADR (Distributed Autonomous Depth-first Routing), a new distributed distance-vector routing protocol designed to adapt quickly to changing link conditions while minimizing network control overhead. In our algorithm, when a link fails, data packets are rerouted through an alternate next hop, and the information about the failed link is propagated with the data packet; therefore, routes are updated dynamically and with little overhead. We have implemented DADR on several link-layer technologies and deployed it in different applications, including AMI deployments in Japan; all implementations resulted in reliable networks that were easy to set up, maintain, and resilient to changing conditions.