Baras, Somasundaram, Jain, and Tabatabaee issued U.S. Patent 8,325,746

Professor John Baras (ECE/ISR), current electrical and computer engineering graduate student, Kaustubh Jain, alumnus of electrical and computer engineering, Kiran Somasundaram (Ph.D. EE ‘10), and alumnus Vahid Tabatabaee (Ph.D. EE '03) are co-inventors of U.S. Patent 8,325,746, "Topology Selection and Broadcast Method for Rule-Based Link State Routing." The patent was issued on December 4, 2012.

This invention of an apparatus and accompanying methodology will optimize the link-state information that is to be broadcast in a routing domain of a communication network for QoS rule-based link-state routing. The routers include any device capable of implementing the routing primitives. The apparatus and method involve pruning the link-state information using local neighborhood information that has been discovered. The local link-state is pruned so that the QoS optimal paths are preserved for link-state routing. Pruning of the potential optimal paths is carried out to minimize the information broadcast to the intra domain routers in an autonomous system/routing domain. The apparatus and method also involve broadcasting the selected link-state information.

Link state routing protocols are a class of routing protocols that make visible, by broadcast, to every station/router in the network the set of links, and their states in the communication graph. The state could indicate a coarse ON-OFF representation of the cost of link, which is used for computing optimal routes. Link sate routing protocols have a significant importance in the history of routing in data networks. A notable one was in the stabilization of the ARPANET routing protocol.

Somasundaram, the primary investigator of this research, is a 2010 graduate of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He now works for Qualcomm. Kaustubh Jain will graduate from ECE in May of 2013. Vahid Tabatabaee was co-advised by former ECE/ISR faculty member Leandros Tassiulas and Dr. Baras. Tabatabaee, a former ISR Assistant Research Scientist, works for Broadcom Corporation in San Jose, California. This research was supported by the Army Research Office.

Published December 11, 2012