Parasitic routing : using social network analysis for routing in disconnecting delay-tolerant MANETs

Abstract

Message delivery in sparse Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) is difficult due to the fact that the network graph is rarely (if ever) connected. As a consequence, a full end-to-end path between nodes may not exist at any given point in time. However, an end-to-end connectivity graph that is time-varying may exist to forward messages. The disconnected nature and the lack of end-to-end connectivity between nodes means that the communication must be delay- tolerant. In order to support message delivery in such disconnected delay-tolerant MANETs (DDTMs), each node acts a router, forwarding messages to other nodes. Messages are buffered using a store-and-forward mechanism where the data is physically carried through the time- varying network graph.