Inter-regional messenger scheduling in delay tolerant mobile networks

The evolution of wireless devices along with the increase in user mobility have created new challenges such as network partitioning and intermittent connectivity. These new challenges have become apparent in many situations where the transmission of critical data is of high priority. Disaster rescue groups, for example, are equipped with numerous devices which constantly gather and transmit various forms of data. The challenge of establishing communication between groups of this type has led to an evolutionary form of networks which we consider in this paper, namely, delay tolerant mobile networks (DTMNs). Nodes in DTMNs usually form clusters that we define as regions. Nodes within each region have end-to-end paths between them. Both regions, as well as nodes within a region, can be either stationary or mobile. For such environments, we propose using a dedicated set of messengers that relay message bundles between these regions. Our goal is to understand how messenger scheduling can be used to improve network performance and connectedness. We develop several classes of messenger scheduling algorithms which can be used to achieve inter-regional communication in such environments. We use simulation to better understand the performance and tradeoffs between these algorithms