A Privacy Preserving Prediction-based Routing Protocol for Mobile Delay Tolerant Networks

Abstract

A prediction-based routing protocol for mobile delay tolerant networks functions by forwarding a message from one intermediate node to another if the latter has higher probability of encountering the destination node. However, this process compromises the privacy of the nodes by revealing their mobility patterns. In this paper, we propose a privacy preserving prediction-based routing protocol that forwards messages by comparing information about communities of nodes instead of individual nodes. Specifically, it compares the maximum probability that a node in the community of a potential intermediate node will encounter the destination node. We present theoretical security analyses as well as practical performance evaluations. Our simulations on a well established community-based mobility model demonstrate that our protocol has comparable performance to existing prediction-based protocols. Yet our protocol is the only one that preserves the privacy of nodes.