Routing in Outer Space: Fair Traffic Load in Multi-Hop Wireless Networks

In this paper we consider security-related and energy-efficiency issues in multi-hop wireless networks. We start our work from the observation, known in the literature, that shortest path routing creates congested areas in multi-hop wireless networks. These areas are critical - they generate both security and energy efficiency issues. We attack these problems and set out routing in outer space, a new routing mechanism that transforms any shortest path routing protocol (or approximated versions of it) into a new protocol that does not create congested areas, does not have the associated security-related issues, and does not encourage selfish positioning. Moreover, the network lives longer of the same network using the original routing protocol (in spite of using more energy globally), and dies more gracefully.