A Survey of Geographical Routing in Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks

Geographic routing offers a radical departure from previous topology-dependent routing paradigms through its use of physical location in the routing process. Geographic routing protocols eliminate dependence on topology storage and the associated costs, which also makes them more suitable to handling dynamic behavior frequently found in wireless ad-hoc networks. Geographic routing protocols have been designed for a variety of applications ranging from mobility prediction and management through to anonymous routing and from energy efficiency to QoS. Geographic routing is also part of the larger area of context-awareness due to its usage of location data to make routing decisions and thus represents an important step in the journey towards ubiquitous computing. The focus of this paper, within the area of geographic routing is on wireless ad-hoc networks and how location information can benefit routing. This paper aims to provide both a comprehensive and methodical survey of existing literature in the area of geographic routing from its inception as well as acting as an introduction to the subject.