Opportunistic Routing Metrics: A Timely One-Stop Tutorial Survey

High-speed, low latency, and heterogeneity features of 5G, as the common denominator of many emerging and classic wireless applications, have put wireless technology back in the spotlight. Continuous connectivity requirement in low-power and wide-reach networks underlines the need for more efficient routing over scarce wireless resources, in multi-hp scenarios. In this regard, Opportunistic Routing (OR), which utilizes the broadcast nature of wireless media to provide transmission cooperation amongst a selected number of overhearing nodes, has become more promising than ever. Crucial to the overall network performance, which nodes to participate and where they stand on the transmission-priority hierarchy, are decided by user-defined OR metrics embedded in OR protocols. Therefore, the task of choosing or designing an appropriate OR metric is a critical one. The numerousness, proprietary notations, and the objective variousness of OR metrics can cause the interested researcher to lose insight and become overwhelmed, making the metric selection or design effort-intensive. While there are not any comprehensive OR metrics surveys in the literature, those who partially address the subject are non-exhaustive and lacking in detail. Furthermore, they offer limited insight regarding related taxonomy and future research recommendations. In this paper, starting with a custom tutorial with a new look to OR and OR metrics, we devise a new framework for OR metric design. Introducing a new taxonomy enables us to take a structured, investigative, and comparative approach to OR metrics, supported by extensive simulations. Exhaustive coverage of OR metrics, formulated in a unified notation, is presented with sufficient details. Self-explanatory, easy-to-grasp, and visual-friendly quick references are provided, which can be used independently from the rest of the paper.