Distance-based energy-efficient opportunistic forwarding in mobile delay tolerant networks

Mobile relay-assisted forwarding can improve the network capacity, but meanwhile increase the energy consumption. In this paper, we propose two distance-based energy-efficient opportunistic forwarding (DEEOF) schemes in mobile delay tolerant networks (DTNs). The proposed schemes strike a balance between energy consumption and network performance by maximizing the energy efficiency while maintaining a high packet delivery ratio from two different angles. Specifically, in the developed algorithms, we introduce the forwarding equivalent energy-efficiency distance (FEED) to quantify the transmission distances achieving the same energy efficiency at different time instances. The expected energy efficiency can thus be estimated based on the FEED. Furthermore, the distribution of the greatest forwarding energy efficiency in the predicted period is investigated to provide more accurate prediction for the energy efficiency. The forwarding decision in the algorithms is made by comparing the current energy efficiency and the estimated future expectation. The performance improvement of the proposed algorithms is also demonstrated by simulation, especially for systems where the source has very limited battery reserves.