Connected Dominating Set Enabled On-Demand Routing (CDS-OR) for Wireless Mesh Networks

In this letter, a connected dominating set based on-demand routing (CDS-OR) mechanism is proposed for wireless ad hoc networks. We argue that there exists a trade-off between CDS size and the amount of information exchanged for CDS formation in a fully distributed ad hoc network. Smaller CDS size is beneficial and essential in minimizing the routing cost, but the amount of information exchanged (via hello or topology control messages) for CDS formation adds significant traffic overhead to the network. The proposed CDS-OR protocol assures that the hello message sizes never exceed a small constant, and an increase in network size has no impact on the hello message sizes. At the same time, the proposed protocol yields a constant approximation to the minimum CDS (MCDS), while assuring network-wide reachability of broadcast messages. Extensive simulations against benchmark routing protocols reveal noticeable superiority of the proposed mechanism in terms of packet delivery ratio and routing cost.