A Centrality Based Routing With a Message Relay Control Mechanism in Opportunistic Networks.

Abstract

Opportunistic networks are a subclass of delay tolerant networks that aims at transmitting messages by exploiting direct contacts among nodes, without the need of a predefined infrastructure. Typical characteristics of Opportunistic networks include high mobility, short radio range, intermittent links, unstable topology, sparse connectivity, to name a few. In such situations, the nodes might still copy and forward messages to nodes that are more likely to meet the destination. As such, the challenge routing in such networks is to design a routing protocol that offers the best tradeoff between cost (number of message replicas) and rate of successful message delivery. This thesis addresses this problem on using the concept of Google Pagerank like centrality to rank nodes in a network using social information. Unlike other nodes in the network, central nodes are more likely to act as communication hubs to facilitate the message forwarding. Furthermore a mechanism of message relay control is designed to overcome and keep the network overhead ratio low. In this thesis, a Centrality Based Routing with a Message Relay Control Mechanism is designed. The proposed CBRWMRCM is evaluated by simulations using the ONE simulator, showing performance compared to other typical routing protocols.