Generalizing Wireless Ad Hoc Routing for Future Edge Applications

Wirelessad hocnetworks are becoming increasingly relevant due to their suitability for Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications. These networks are comprised of devices that communicate directly with each other through the wireless medium. In applications deployed over a large area, each device is unable to directly contact all others, and thus they must cooperate to achieve multi-hop communication. The essential service for this isRouting, which is crucial for most applications and services in multi-hopad hocnetworks. Although many wireless routing protocols have been proposed, no single protocol is deemed the most suitable for all scenarios. Therefore, it is crucial to identify the key differences and similarities between protocols to better compare, combine, or dynamically elect which one to use in different settings and conditions. However, identifying such key similarities and distinctions is challenging due to highly heterogeneous specifications and assumptions. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework for specifying routing protocols for wirelessad hocnetworks, which abstracts their common elements and that can be parameterized to capture the behavior of particular instances of existing protocols. Furthermore, since many wirelessad hocrouting protocols lack systematic experimental evaluation on real networks, we leverage an implementation of our framework to conduct an experimental evaluation of several representative protocols using commodity devices.