Back-pressure routing and rate control for ICNs

Abstract

We study a network composed of multiple clusters of wireless nodes. Within each cluster, nodes can communicate directly using the wireless links; however, these clusters are far away such that direct communication between the clusters is impossible except through "mobile" contact nodes. These mobile contact nodes are data carriers that shuffle between clusters and transport data from source to destination clusters. There are several applications of our network model (e.g., clusters of mobile soldiers connected via unmanned aerial vehicles). At the same time, much interest has been garnered by cross-layer design for wireless networks in order to improve efficiency and better allocate resources. In this paper, we focus on queue based cross-layer technique known as back-pressure algorithm. The algorithm is known to be throughput optimal, as well as resilient to disruptions in the network, making it an ideal place to start when designing communication protocols for our intermittently connected network. In this paper, we design a back-pressure routing/rate control algorithm for intermittently connected networks (ICNs). We implement a modified back-pressure routing algorithm on a 16-node experimental test bed, discuss some of the issues regarding design and implementation, and present our experimental results.