An energy efficient hybrid routing strategy for delay tolerant networks

Networks that lack continuous connectivity among their nodes due to node mobility, limited data storage space and constrained power sources are called Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs). DTN nodes store and carry the data packets until they come into the communication range of each other. In recent years several protocols have been developed specifically for routing in DTNs. These protocols vary in number of copies they use and the kind and amount of knowledge they use to guide the packets to their destinations. Remaining energy level, average latency, overhead ratio and delivery ratio are some of the performance metrics used to measure the performance of these protocols. The existing protocols are good in some of these metrics but not all of them. There is always a trade-off between different performance metrics. In this paper we have proposed a Hybrid protocol utilizing advantages of two protocols namely Epidemic and Probabilistic Routing. The performance is discussed and compared of these protocols with our Hybrid strategy in Opportunistic Network Environment tool.