Location-aware routing for Delay Tolerant Networks

In this paper, we sought to understand the reasons causing failures and delays of message delivery in Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN), and to use this understanding for improving the network. By studying two real-world datasets, we found that node isolation is prevalent, which largely accounts for the inefficiencies in DTN's message delivery. In addition, by analyzing nodes' contact-location relationship, we found that individual and system-wide key locations exist and their existence suggests potential improvements. Motivated by our observations, we designed a location aware routing scheme for DTN networks. With simulation-based experiments, we compared our proposal with other representative DTN routing schemes, and showed that with the awareness of the location information, our solution can deliver more messages within shorter delays, therefore improves the network intensively.