Poisson's probability‐based Q‐Routing techniques for message forwarding in opportunistic networks

Abstract

SummaryOpportunistic Networks (OppNets) are intermittently connected infrastructure less wireless networks. There is no continuous end‐to‐end connection between the sender and the receiver, and hence nodes follow a store‐carry‐forward mechanism. The routing algorithm is required to be adaptive to the changing topology of the network. In this work, Q‐Routing technique has been used with forwarding probability and incorporated using Poisson's probability for decision making and controlling transmission energy. The algorithm refines the forwarding decision of finding the next suitable hop by exploiting the characteristics of nodes such as daily routines, mobility pattern, etc. In simulations, the performance of PBQ‐Routing is compared with Q‐Routing, Epidemic Routing, PRoPHET (Probabilistic Routing Protocol using History of Encounters and Transitivity), and HBPR (History Based Prediction Routing) for OppNets. The use of Poisson's distribution improves the effectiveness of the probabilistic forwarding decision. The findings show that the delivery probability of PBQ‐Routing almost gets doubled and overhead ratio reduces to half in comparison with that of Q‐Routing when used in OppNets. PBQ‐Routing outperforms other Q‐Routing based algorithms over Poisson's distribution. As there is less replication in case of PBQ‐Routing, it also saves the transmission energy.