ARAG: A Routing Algorithm Based on Incentive Mechanisms for DTN With Nodes’ Selfishness

A delay tolerant network (DTN) is a mobile ad hoc network with extremely limited network resources. When DTN is applied in the urban environment, nodes are not willing to consume their limited resources to forward messages for other nodes, or they prefer a relay node that encounters the destination node with a higher probability to forward messages for themselves owing to the characteristics of sociality and selfishness of nodes, which results in poor network performance. To address this issue, a routing algorithm based on incentive mechanisms was proposed in this paper, which is called ARAG. In the process of forwarding message, the algorithm determines the probability of messages received by relay nodes based on the resource consumption of the sender node. Simultaneously, when a source node generates a message, the threshold of copies is set based on the consumption of its resources, and the total number of the same message in the network will not exceed the threshold. Simulation results show that the algorithm is superior to the existing Epidemic algorithm, Prophet algorithm, and GTMEA algorithm in terms of the delivery ratio, the average delay, and network overhead.