Performance Comparison of Unicast Routing Schemes in DTNs

Delay and disruption tolerant networks have been proposed to address data communication challenges in network scenarios where an instantaneous end-to-end path between a source and destination may not exist, and the links between nodes may be opportunistic, predictably connectable, or periodically- (dis)connected. In this paper, we focus on comparing the performance of different unicast routing schemes proposed for intragroup communications. In particular, we conduct performance studies for different DTN scenarios, e.g., DTNs with different node densities, DTNs with different mobility models, networks with different percentage of nodes supporting DTN functionality, etc. In addition, we also study intergroup DTN routing scenarios where message ferries and backhaul links are used. Our results indicate that (a) the store-and-forward and custody transfer concepts have significantly improved the delivery ratio in a sparsely connected network, (b) in very sparse networks, message ferries are required to enable communications, (c) a high delivery ratio can be maintained even with only 50% of the nodes supporting DTN functionality, (d) the two-way delay in bidirectional flows only experience 10% more delay than oneway delay, and, (e) some routing schemes are optimized to perform well in certain mobility scenarios and thus a hybrid scheme will work best in all scenarios.

Technical Report LU-CSE-06-024, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Lehigh University, 2006.

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