Link configuration and message forwarding for intermittently connected mobile networks

A number of routing schemes have been proposed for intermittently connected mobile networks. In these schemes, a node carries a message and forwards the message to another node that it meets. To increase the delivery success rate, typically, multiple copies of the message are created and forwarded to multiple neighbor nodes. The neighbor nodes are selected based on such criteria as the probability that the neighbor node is likely to meet the destination. However, the risk of forwarding failure due to link disconnection has not been considered. In this paper we consider forwarding failure in the forwarding decision. We first develop a mathematical model to catch an optimal fragmentation size of message that minimizes the message delivery delay while achieving a certain level of message delivery ratio. Then we propose an real-time decision algorithm which decides during routing whether a certain neighbor node is appropriate for message forwarding.