Delay-constrained single-copy multi-path data transmission in mobile opportunistic networks

In this work we study the problem of delay-constrained data transmission in mobile opportunistic networks. In contrast to the single-copy single-path and multi-copy multi-path routing schemes that have been discussed in the literature, we aim to determine an optimal single-copy multi-path transmission strategy that satisfies delay requirement and at the same time minimizes communication cost. We first propose a centralized optimal formulation, and then develop a distributed routing algorithm under practical network settings. We implement the proposed algorithm on Dell Streak tablets and carry out an experiment with 25 nodes for a period of two weeks. Moreover, we extract the algorithm codes from our prototype and run simulations based on the Haggle trace to study its performance trends under various network settings.