Performance study on delay tolerant networks in maritime communication environments

Today, it is still hard to form an alternative network in a maritime environment besides using costly satellite links because of the lack of wireless infrastructure at sea. In the TRITON project, we are exploring the use of WiMAX-based mesh technology for over the horizon ship-to-ship communications with Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) features to provide less expensive wireless communication services at sea. In this paper, we study the performance on delay tolerant networks in the maritime communication environment. We compare the performance of different routing schemes including regular routing protocols such as Ad Hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) Routing and Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR), and DTN routing protocols such as Epidemic Routing and Spray and Wait Routing. Simulation results, based on a maritime terrain model derived from actual measurements in the Strait of Singapore, show that DTN routing achieves better end-to-end packet delivery ratio than regular routing schemes in WiMAX-based maritime mesh networks.