GeoDTC: A New Geographic Routing Protocol Based on Distance, Time and Custody Transfer

This paper fits into the continuous efforts of researchers to propose a routing protocol able to successfully deliver data at an affordable cost under the challenging networks that are Vehicular Delay Tolerant Networks. Through the literature, several routing protocols based on various approaches have been proposed. However, during the last decade, the geographical approach emerged as the most natural to apply, due mainly to the popularisation of embedded GPS navigation systems. Despite this, and the proposal of different geographic based routing protocols for VDTNs, researchers are still looking for an ideal one, because of hard assumptions, limited performances or small and idealistic evaluation scenarios compared to real word environments. In this paper, we propose GeoDTC, a new geographic routing protocol dedicated to VDTNs, based on two distinct metrics namely: Distance and Time; jointly to the recurrent use of Custody Transfer. We conduct an extensive study to compare our proposal against well-knows protocols namely: Epidemic, Direct Delivery, GeoSpray and Prophet, under realistic simulation environment and scenario by using the large-scale dataset TAPAS Cologne. Simulations results reveal better performances for our proposal. Moreover, they demonstrate the potential benefits of intensive usage of the Custody Transfer and the introduction of various mechanisms.