Routing in Outer Space: Improved Security and Energy-Efficiency 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, in case of uniform traffic, guarantees that every node of the network is responsible for relaying the same number of messages, on expectation. We can show that a network that uses routing in outer space does not have congested areas, does not have the associated security-related issues, does not encourage selfish positioning, and, in spite of using more energy globally, lives longer of the same network using the original routing protocol.