Adaptive routing in mobile opportunistic networks

TLDR

The study aims to develop an adaptive routing scheme that selects between AODV and DTN protocols based on local network conditions such as node density, message size, and path length. The method dynamically chooses the routing agent—either AODV with TCP or DTN with bundle protocol—using only local information about node density, message size, and path length. Simulations show that DTN with bundle protocol outperforms AODV/TCP in low‑density scenarios, but in high‑density networks it incurs collisions and retransmissions that degrade performance.

Abstract

In this paper, we study how to adapt the routing according to dynamic network conditions in wireless ad hoc networks. We present a method that dynamically chooses routing agent between ad hoc on-demand distance vector routing protocol (AODV) with TCP (end-to-end transport) and delay-tolerant networking (DTN) routing and bundle protocol (hop-by-hop transport). We use simulations to confirm that DTN routing and the bundle protocol leads to significantly shorter end-to-end delays and higher message delivery ratios than AODV and end-to-end TCP when the wireless node density is low. However, with high node density, DTN routing, especially epidemic routing, suffers from multiple bundle copies and simultaneous transmissions that lead into collisions and retransmissions at the wireless link (MAC) layer. Thus, we propose a simple adaptive scheme that uses only local information to transmit the messages from source to destination using either AODV or DTN routing, depending on current node density, message size, and path length to destination.