Optimal Oblivious Routing in Hole-Free Networks

Abstract. We study oblivious routing algorithms in which the packet paths are constructed independently of each other. Oblivious algorithms are inherently distributed and they can be designed to efficiently balance the network utilization. We give an oblivious routing algorithm for the class of hole-free networks, in which the nodes are topologically embedded in simple areas of the plane. Such networks appear frequently in wireless and sensor network topologies. The algorithm achieves optimal congestion and stretch. The stretch of the resulting paths is constant. The congestion is O(C ∗ log n), where C ∗ is the optimal non-oblivious congestion and n is the number of nodes. This congestion bound is asymptotically worst-case optimal for oblivious routing algorithms. Key words: oblivious routing, congestion, path stretch, wireless networks, sensor networks