DDR: A Deadline-Driven Routing Protocol for Delay Guaranteed Service

Time-sensitive applications have become increasingly prevalent in modern networks, necessitating the development of Delay-Guaranteed Routing (DGR) solutions. Finding an optimal DGR solution remains a challenging task due to the NP-hard nature of the problem and the dynamic nature of network traffic. In this paper, we propose Deadline-Driven Routing (DDR), a distributed traffic-aware adaptive routing protocol that addresses the DGR problem. Inspired by online navigation techniques, DDR leverages real-time traffic conditions to optimize routing decisions and ensure on-time packet delivery. By combining network topology-based path generation with real-time traffic knowledge, each router can adjust packet forwarding directions to meet its heterogeneous latency requirements. Comprehensive simulations on real-world network topologies demonstrate that DDR can consistently provide delay-guaranteed service in different network topologies with varying traffic conditions. In addition, DDR ensures backward compatibility with legacy devices and existing routing protocols, making it a viable solution for supporting delay-guaranteed service.