Efficient Opportunistic Routing in Utility-Based Ad Hoc Networks

Due to resource scarcity, a paramount concern in ad hoc networks is utilizing limited resources efficiently. The self-organized nature of ad hoc networks makes the network utility-based approach an efficient way to allocate limited resources. However, the effect of link instability has not yet been adequately addressed in literature. To efficiently address the routing problem in ad hoc networks, we integrate the cost and stability into a network utility metric, and adopt the metric to evaluate the routing optimality in a unified, opportunistic routing model. Based on this model, an efficient algorithm is designed, both centralized and distributed implementations are presented, and extensive simulations on NS-2 are conducted to verify our results.