Trace-based performance analysis of opportunistic forwarding under imperfect node cooperation

The paper proposes an innovative method for the performance analysis of opportunistic forwarding protocols over files logging mobile node encounters (contact traces). The method is modular and evolves in three steps. It first carries out contact filtering to isolate contacts that constitute message forwarding opportunities for givenmessage coordinates and forwarding rules. It then draws on graph expansion techniques to capture these forwarding contacts into sparse space-time graph constructs. Finally, it runs standard shortest path algorithms over these constructs and derives typical performance metrics such as message delivery delay and path hopcount. The method is flexible in that it can easily assess the protocol operation under various expressions of imperfect node cooperation. We describe it in detail, analyze its complexity, and evaluate it against discrete event simulations for three representative randomized forwarding schemes. The match with the simulation results is excellent and obtained with run times up to three orders of size smaller than the duration of the simulations, thus rendering our method a valuable tool for the performance analysis of opportunistic forwarding schemes.