On the Feasibility of Gradient-based Routing Mechanisms Using Bloom Filters

Gradient-based routing using Bloom filters is an effective mechanism to enable data-driven queries in multi-hop networks. A node compressively describes its data items as a Bloom filter, which is then diffused away to the other nodes with information decay. The Bloom filters form an information potential that eventually navigates queries to the source node by ascending the potential field. The existing designs of Bloom filters, however, have critical limitations with respect to the feasibility of gradient-based routing. The compressed routing entries appear to be noisy. Noise in unrelated routing entries is very likely to equal to even outweigh information in right routing entries, thus blinding a query to its desired destination. This work addresses the root cause of the mismatch between the idea and the practical performance of gradient-based routing using Bloom filters. We first investigate the impact of decaying model on the effectiveness of routing entries, and then evaluate the negative impact of noise on routing decisions. Based on such analytical results, we derive the necessary and sufficient condition of feasible gradient-based routing using Bloom filters. Accordingly, we propose a receiveroriented design of Bloom filters, called Wader, which satisfies the above condition. The evaluation results demonstrate that Wader guarantees the correctness and efficiency of gradient-based routing with high probability.