Achieving Ubiquitous Network Connectivity Using an RFID Tag-Based Routing Protocol

Ubiquitous network connectivity is challenged in areas outside of the range of wireless base stations and cellular networks. In such networks the mobile nodes are disconnected for significantly long periods of time. In this paper, we propose an approach where mobile nodes deposit/retrieve messages to/from known point locations in the geographic region. Messages are delivered from a source by being deposited at one or more locations that are later visited by the destination. We propose the use of passive, read/writable radio frequency identification tags, one per point location. Our simulation results indicate that our approach can achieve competitive message latency and delivery rates. We also provide techniques for optimizing the tag placement, including tag pruning, probability based tag distribution and a genetic algorithm; the genetic algorithm is shown to provide the best solutions to this problem.