CCPMFM: A community-based message forwarding method in Delay Tolerant Networks

In Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs), message forwarding is a challenging open problem because of low node density and lack of global information. Most of the previous forwarding methods select a node as a relay node with the best cumulative and global ability of contacting the destination without considering the maximum message acceptable delivery latency. However, if the network is composed of several communities, the cumulatively and globally calculated forwarding metric (and not in each community) will not have suitable estimation of contact between relay node and destination. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce and evaluate a novel forwarding method, which called Community-based Contact Prediction message forwarding method (CCPMFM). The CCPMFM exploits a semi-Markov process to explain and predict the node mobility between communities. The CCPMFM selects the relay node with regard to the maximum message acceptable delivery latency. To calculate the forwarding metric, CCPMFM considers the contact patterns of each community only for the same community and not for the entire network. CCPMFM also selects the relay node with regard to maximum message acceptable delivery latency. The evaluation results show that this method improves the delivery ratio and reduces the number of message forwardings and delivery latency with respect to prevalent DTNs forwarding methods.