Analysis for bio-inspired thrown-box assisted message dissemination in delay tolerant networks

Inspired by biological communication, the strategy of deploying communication and storage equipment called thrown box is proposed to increase message delivery probability and to reduce transmission latency in delay tolerant networks. In this paper, we study the thrown-box assisted message dissemination models by analyzing a few cases on the message delivery rate and related latency distribution. We divide such communications into two processes. We first model the message delivering process among thrown boxes and derive time related message distribution on the boxes. Then we investigate the message collection process to obtain the expected number of informed collectors as a function of time. In addition, we analyze the latency distribution for message collection. Our analysis is derived based on a discrete Markov Chain model. The numerical examples are provided to validate our model and to examine the features of message dissemination under different network scenarios. The factors such as message relay and lifetime are considered. The results show that the tradeoff exists between the number of the boxes and the message lifetime, etc. In summary, our results will help storage management and delay management in DTNs and provide guidelines for applications of search and surveillance.