Cluster-Based Back-Pressure Routing Algorithm

The back-pressure algorithm introduced in 1992 by Tassiulas and Ephremides is a well-known distributed and adaptive routing/scheduling algorithm where nodes only need the queue-length information of neighboring nodes to make routing decisions. Packets are adaptively routed in the network according to congestion information, which makes the algorithm resilient to traffic and topology changes. However, the back-pressure algorithm requires routers to maintain a separate queue for each destination, which precludes its implementation in large-scale networks. In this paper, we propose a distributed cluster-based back-pressure routing algorithm that retains the adaptability of back-pressure routing while significantly reducing the number of queues that have to be maintained at each node.