A high-efficiency low-delay routing algorithm for opportunistic networks

Epidemic Routing offers a reliable approach to transmitting data in opportunistic networks, which has developed a few of variations so far. However, these algorithms have some redundant control overhead in sensing neighbor nodes and exchanging data packets. To address the issue, we propose a high-efficiency low-delay routing algorithm based on exchange of increments in packet indexes. Our algorithm transmits only the increments of packet indexes in the process of packet exchange, sends the data packets approaching their destinations at first, and utilizes only Hello messages to sense encountered nodes. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that our algorithm outperforms the classical Epidemic Routing algorithm and one of its present improvements in terms of control overhead and end-to-end delay.