Routing in delay tolerant networks with periodic connections

Abstract

In delay tolerant networks (DTNs), the network may not be fully connected at any instance of time, but connections occurring between nodes at di erent times make the network connected through the entire time continuum. In such a case, traditional routing methods fail to operate as there are no contemporaneous end-to-end paths between sources and destinations. This study examines the routing in DTNs where connections arise in a periodic nature. Various levels of periodicity are analyzed to meet requirements of di erent network models. We propose various routing algorithms for periodic connections. Our proposed methods can nd routes that can guarantee earliest delivery and minimum hop count. We evaluate our routing schemes via extensive simulation experiments and also compare them to some other popular routing approaches proposed for delay tolerant networks. Our evaluations show the feasibility and e ectivenes of our schemes as alternative routing methods for delay tolerant networks.