Evolving model of opportunistic routing in delay tolerant networks

In Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN), as disconnections between nodes are frequent, establishing the routing paths from the source node to the destination node may not be possible. Messages are forwarded in DTN similarly to an infective disease spreading among humans. This paper sets up an evolving model of messages delivery. Also, in this paper, we propose the 'crash' issue. Because large part of persons will turn off their mobile phones and discard the messages received, the 'crash' could happen in DTNs. The 'crash' in DTN means large part of the copies of messages are discarded within a short time duration. The evolving model is validated by a message forwarding simulation among mobile nodes. In the simulation, we study the influence of 'crashes' on the delivery ratio and delay of Epidemic routing, SprayAndWait and Prophet routing protocols. © 2011 IEEE