CORR: Centralized Opportunistic Reactive Routing for Mobile Multi-Hop Wireless Networks

Most Software-Defined Networking (SDN) based centralized architectures for mobile multi-hop wireless networks propose using one or more of the following: infrastructure for hosting stationary SDNC, out-of-band single-hop (direct) communication links, location-tracking, or existing IP connectivity. Such architectures are inadequate for infrastructure-less networks having low-capacity links and susceptibility to high interference, packet losses, and collisions. We describe a novel centralized opportunistic reactive routing protocol called CORR that allows a mobile SDN Controller (SDNC) to establish connectivity by identifying a subset of nodes in the network and making them the network backbone for forwarding packets. The SDNC learns the network topology via the backbone nodes, reducing the network load and improving the scalability. We evaluate CORR for a wide range of network sizes, densities, and traffic rates. Our ns3 simulation results indicate that CORR provides up to 10% better packet delivery ratio than AODV while incurring at least 1.5x lower network load and 3x lower delay, making it energy efficient and suitable for time-sensitive applications.