VIMLOC: Virtual Home Region multi-hash Location Service in wireless mesh networks

Position-based routing schemes (e.g. geographic routing) are expected to improve scalability of wireless networks, as they allow reducing the state information stored in nodes compared to topology-based routing. Moreover, geographic routing schemes need to differentiate between the identifier of a node and its location. Given the mobility of (some) nodes, their location may continuously change, and there is the need to map between both (i.e. node ID and current location of this node) as part of the mobility management tasks. Therefore, of all mobility management building blocks, we focus on location management, which is in charge of this mapping. The design of distributed location management schemes for large wireless mesh networks (WMNs) remains a challenge. In this paper, the distributed Virtual Home Region Multi-Hash Location Service (VIMLOC) is proposed as location management scheme for WMNs. It is based on the Virtual Home Region concept, but it is adapted to the requirements of large-scale WMNs. The design of VIMLOC takes into account the existence of a stable wireless backbone. It also provides mechanisms to replicate location information for robustness and packet diverting capabilities for accuracy, among other improvements. A brief description of the implementation of VIMLOC using the Click modular router is also presented as well as a preliminary evaluation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first location service scheme specially designed and implemented for WMNs.