End-to-End Routing Approach for SDN Based Wireless Ad Hoc Network

In this paper, we present novel solutions to the problem of routing flows through a SDN (Software Defined Network) based wireless ad hoc mesh network such that the mean wait time is minimized. We present two routing algorithms: Long-Short Path (LSP) and Stop and Reroute (SR). LSP routes short flows using the MC3 congestion first path finding algorithm and routes long flows using the SPF topology first path finding algorithm. SR routes all flows using MC3. However, when a short flow is routed along a path that is used partially by long flows, a long flow with the latest released time is chosen and routed along a different path chosen using MC3. Our simulations show that our algorithms improve the network performance by reducing the mean wait time by an average of 15.6%, reducing the mean slowdown by an average of 2.0%, reducing the maximum completion time by an average of 7.8% and by increasing the mean throughput by an average of 9.0% compared to using just the common SPF algorithm for all flows. Explicitly considering the flow size in choosing a path through the network improves network performance along multiple dimensions; therefore, flow size should be considered explicitly in routing path selection algorithms.