Human mobility based message transfer in Delay Tolerant Networks — A single relay approach

A Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) is a type of Mobile Ad Hoc Network, where end-to-end connectivity between a pair of nodes may never exist. Due to this lack of end-to-end connectivity, traditional routing methods are not suitable in a DTN. However, various approaches have been proposed to achieve message transfer in such a network. This work looks into utilizing the capacity of 802.11n wireless standard, available on the modern mobile devices for this task. Modern mobile devices are equipped with multiple wireless ports as well as ever increasing processing power and storage capacity. They are not utilized as an alternative means for message transfer, even when the infrastructure-based connectivity is not available. The mobile devices move around according to the human mobility pattern, which is semi-deterministic in nature. This work studies how this semi-deterministic nature of human mobility can be effectively utilized for message transfer in a DTN environment. Simulation shows that the existing features of mobile devices are sufficient to achieve close to 100% connection opportunities.