We propose a new link metric called normalized advance (NADV) for geographic routing in multihop wireless networks. NADV selects neighbors with the optimal trade-off between proximity and link cost. Coupled with the local next hop decision in geographic routing, NADV provides an adaptive and efficient cost-aware routing strategy. Depending on the objective or message priority, applications can use the NADV framework to minimize various types of link cost.

In this paper we present efficient methods for link cost estimation and perform detailed simulations in diverse scenarios. Our results show that NADV outperforms current schemes in many aspects: for example, in high noise environments with frequent packet losses, the use of NADV leads to 83% higher delivery ratio. When compared to centralized routing, geographic routing using NADV finds paths whose cost is close to the optimum.