Impact of Trace-Based Mobility Models on the Energy Consumption of Delay-Tolerant Routing Protocols

In Delay-Tolerant Network (DTN), nodes’ energy consumption depends highly on their movement pattern since energy-constrained nodes move in a “Store-Carry-and Forward” paradigm for data communication. Energy must be expensed efficiently, selecting a suitable mobility model for successfully delivering messages in DTN. Mobility models are generally two types: one is synthetic mobility, and the other is trace-based mobility. In this research, the impact of trace-based mobility on the energy consumption for delay-tolerant routing protocols is evaluated in terms of the average remaining energy and the number of dead nodes. Here, three trace-based mobility models: MIT Reality, INFOCOM, and Cambridge Imotes are considered. Shortest Path Map-Based Movement from synthetic mobility is also investigated in this research for better analysis. These mobility models are implemented for five delay-tolerant routing protocols: Epidemic, Spray and Wait, PRoPHET, MaxProp, and RAPID and simulated in the opportunistic Network Environment (ONE) simulator using a similar simulation environment. Simulations are performed by varying message generation intervals, message Time-To-Live (TTL), and buffer size, respectively, while others remain fixed. From the outcomes of simulations, we have finally found that INFOCOM trace on MaxProp protocol has the minimum value of average remaining energy, while Spray and Wait protocol with MIT Reality has the maximum value of average remaining energy. Apart from this, Shortest Path Map-Based Movement for MaxProp protocol measures the highest number of dead nodes, and Spray and Wait protocol in Cambridge Imotes computes the least number of dead nodes.