Directional forward routing for disruption tolerant networks

In disruption tolerant networks, aggressive packet forwarding scheme like flooding has a major drawback in terms of network congestion. In this paper, we proposed a new routing algorithm, called directional forward routing (DFR). DFR caches the position information of neighbors, and selects the appropriate relays according to the directional angles among these neighbors and the destination. Meanwhile, DFR arranges the forwarding sequence and the dropping priority based on their assigned weight. The weight is determined by the replication density, delivery predictability, and TTL. A unique feature of DFR is that it has an ACK vector exchange mechanism that is used to purge the redundant messages. An extensive simulation of DFR using various scenarios was carried out and its performance was compared to well known DTN routing protocols: epidemic routing, randomized routing and spray-and-wait routing. Our results show that DFR outperforms them in all scenarios in terms of packet delay and delivery.