VINE: Zero-Control-Packet Routing for Ultra-Low-Capacity Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

We consider the problem of routing short-burst data in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) characterized by ultra-low data rates. Existing routing protocols exhibit poor scalability in such low-capacity regimes due to their use of control packets. We present a novel on-demand zero-control-packet routing protocol called VINE that computes cost gradients to nodes by inspecting packet headers of the received data packets, which are then used to forward the future data packets. VINE provides data reliability via per-hop implicit acknowledgments and end-to-end acknowledgments. We describe VINE and derive an expression for its communication complexity. We present ns3 simulation results across a wide range of network sizes, densities, and traffic that show that VINE significantly outperforms AODV across all of these scenarios, with up to ~2.5x higher delivery ratio. VINE also provides better security by eliminating scope for control attacks. VINE has been implemented on the goTenna Pro mesh networking device for the military and public safety markets.