Routing for group mobility in mobile ad hoc networks with delay-tolerant approach

Since network disconnection will happen more frequently in mobile ad hoc network with group mobility model, the routing strategy proposed in delay-tolerant network could be applied for it. However, most of the current delay-tolerant routing protocols are designed based on the entity mobility model, not on the group mobility model. Motivated by this, in this paper we have proposed a new routing scheme called group-epidemic routing (G-ER), on the basis of one proposed delay-tolerant routing protocol called epidemic routing (ER), to make it perform more effectively for group mobility model. Through making use of the uniqueness of the group mobility models, one significant improvement measure has been proposed in which a group of nodes will be behaved as a single node. In addition, we introduce the individual node buffer management to further enhance the network performance especially in the more disconnected scenarios. The simulation results show that the proposed G-ER outperforms ER in both packet delivery ratio and delay under group mobility scenario.