Fuzzy-Spray: Efficient routing in delay tolerant ad-hoc network based on fuzzy decision mechanism

Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) is a sparse and intermittently connected mobile wireless network where reliable communication and end-to-end connectivity cannot be assured. In DTN, a node delivers messages to the destination using store and forward scheme. Messages are copied and transferred to multiple relay-nodes in order to increase the opportunity for that message to reach the intended destination. Contact is the time duration for which two or more mobile nodes encounter each other within their radio transmission ranges, and are able to transfer messages. Due to arbitrary node movement, contact time will be varied, and is unlikely to be predictable. In this paper, we propose a fuzzy decision mechanism we called ldquofuzzy-sprayrdquo, to improve the routing and packet transfer efficiency in DTN environment. Fuzzy-spray can reduce overall latency in DTN by intelligently selecting appropriate messages to send to the relay-node during its next contact time. It uses fuzzy logic to prioritize messages that are stored in the buffer, based only on local parameters from each message, namely forward transmission count and message size. There is no need to know a priori information about network such as node mobility model, or node-distribution across the deployed area. The simulation results show that fuzzy-spray has the best performance in terms of overall speed of delivery, and lowest average message delay compared with other existing algorithms.