Abstract
In Opportunistic Networks (OppNets), mobility of and contact between nodes are explored to create communication opportunities and exchange messages and information. A basic premise for a better performance of these networks is a collaboration of the nodes during communication. However, due to energy restriction factors, nodes may eventually fail to collaborate with message exchanges. In this work, we propose a routing mechanism called eGPDMI to improve message probability of delivery while optimizing nodes’ energy consumption. Unlike other algorithms proposed in OppNets literature, eGPDMI groups nodes by energy level and nodes interests using clustering techniques. Our major assumption is that retaining messages in nodes with the highest energy levels can improve network performance, thus overcoming the problem of nodes’ disconnection due to unwillingness to cooperate due to low energy values. Through questionnaire application and factorial design experiments, we characterize the impacts of energy levels in OppNets. Further, we apply performance evaluation of the eGPDMI mechanism in terms of effectiveness using mobility from real-world scenarios. The results show that our mechanism effectively reduces the degradation of the probability of delivery when the minimum energy level used for nodes to cooperate with communication increases.
Highlights
Recent advances in wireless networks have boosted promising paradigms such as communication between people directly from their own devices without using network infrastructure
Opportunistic Networks (OppNets) are a particular case of delay-tolerant networks (DTN), where messages exchange occurs during contact opportunities when mobile nodes are in the same coverage area
A study by Loudari and Benamar [18] on the evaluation and comparison of energy consumption in OppNets takes into account mobility models relating them to energy consumption and selfish nodes, concluding that routing protocols in opportunistic networks focus on decreasing the average delay and the overhead and increasing the message delivery rate
Summary
Recent advances in wireless networks have boosted promising paradigms such as communication between people directly from their own devices without using network infrastructure. We conceived, designed, and implemented a routing protocol that groups nodes according to their battery usage pattern, classifying them by high and low power levels, with forwarding decisions based on devices with similar power levels, considering the high levels. The proposed mechanism intends to apply a forwarding decision based on the nodes’ energy consumption, combining the nodes’ social interests over the nodes. The idealized routing mechanism creates groups of nodes according to both the energy levels and the similarity of social interests. This combination avoids trying to forward messages through nodes that are considered selfish because of the limited available energy.
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