Exploring Centrality for Message Forwarding in Opportunistic Networks

In opportunistic networks, centrality characterizes a node's capability to act as a communication hub. In this paper, we provide an in-depth study of choosing effective centrality metrics for message forwarding in bandwidth-limited opportunistic networks. Based on this study, we propose a destination-unaware forwarding algorithm that accounts for the popularity of a node and the contact durations between nodes. We evaluate the algorithm on two experimental human mobility traces. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves higher system throughput while maintaining a lower forwarding cost compared with several known destination-unaware forwarding schemes.