Exploiting Mobile Contact Patterns for Message Forwarding in Mobile Opportunistic Networks

When sparse and challenged networks are characterized by small node population, non-randomized node distribution, and low node density, it is hard to maintain end-to-end connectivity among mobile nodes. The mobile opportunistic networking technology provides data dissemination services by means of transient inter-node communications during node movements in a network. Recent studies intend to exploit node mobility to store, carry and forward data upon opportunistic contacts among nodes. To address the uncertainty nature of future contacts, traditional ways replicate message copies to increase data delivery. However, most replication techniques forward message copies either in a greedy manner or select the next forwarding node by considering only contact history. In this paper, we exploit contact patterns among mobile nodes and propose a Regular and Sporadic Contact-Based Routing (RSCR) scheme where regular and sporadic contact patterns are defined to distinguish contacts of which either periodically or occasionally appear in a time scale, to enhance delivery rate in a cost-effective manner. We conduct synthetic simulation to examine the RSCR scheme under the SLAW and Infocom’05 mobility traces. Performance results show its efficiency on the successful delivery rate with lower message overhead as compared with the typical Epidemic and PRoPHETv2 schemes.