Latency Analysis for Thrown Box Based Message Dissemination

In delay tolerant network, message delivery can be inspired by biological communication models in realizing encountering and delivering. One way of communications can be through "thrown box" where the messages can be left and collected by different nodes in mimicking pheromone-based communications. In thrown box based model, the box is viewed as message relay and the delivery rate is enhanced by spreading a message at as many boxes as possible. Both the life time of message left at the boxes and message leaving preference will have a significant influence on the latency and delivery ratio in message dissemination. In this paper, we model the latency problem as discrete time Markov Chain and further derive the time distribution of first contact between the message and collector. By varying the parameters of message leaving probability and initial environment condition, the latency related results are studied.