Trajectory Based Forwarding (TBF)

Routing packets along a specified curve is a new approach to forwarding packets in large scale dense ad-hoc networks. The basic idea in this approach is to embed the trajectory in the packet and then let the intermediate nodes forward packets to those nodes that lie more or less on the trajectory. Representing route paths as trajectories is an efficient scalable encoding technique in dense networks. Since a trajectory does not explicitly encode the nodes in the path, it is impervious to changes in specific nodes that make up the topology. We believe that trajectories are a natural namespace to describe route paths when the topology of the network matches the topography of the physical surroundings in which it is deployed which by very definition is embedded computing. Forwarding packets along trajectories can be very effective in implementing many networking functions when standard bootstrapping or configuration services are not available, as will be the case in disposable networks where nodes are thrown or dropped to form a one-time use network.

• Badri Nath and Dragos Niculescu, "Routing on a Curve", in HOTNETS-I, October 2002, Princeton, NJ, 2002. (.pdf)


• Dragos Niculescu, Badri Nath, "Trajectory based forwarding and its applications," MOBICOM 2003, Sept 2003. (.pdf).


• Dragos Niculescu and Badri Nath, "Localized Positioning in Ad Hoc Networks", in submission (.pdf).
  


• TBF and APS simulator code - (in CAML).


• Fourier Net - (Badri)


• TBF implementation on TinyOS


• Examples (click to see larger images)

  Flooding I	Sine wave
  Flooding II	Three phase discovery