SECA on MIA-DTN: Tackling the Energy Issue in Monitor Incorporated Adaptive Delay Tolerant Network Using a Simplistic Energy Conscious Approach

Abstract

It has been more than a decade since the inception of the Delay Tolerant Network (DTN)—a medium of communication between heterogeneous, fickle and energy hungry nodes. Since then quite a many variations of the original model have been proposed. One such variation is the Monitor Incorporated Adaptive DTN (MIA-DTN), which has special monitor nodes to keep an eye on the performance of the other nodes in the network. Like any other variant of DTN, it is crippled by the “energy drainage” issue. As such we propose to apply the Simplistic Energy Conscious Approach (SECA) on this network. SECA administers routing of messages to nodes with sufficient remaining energy levels such that the bulk of messages forwarded are in proportion to the receiver’s energy level. To achieve this it employs two threshold values. MIA-DTN has two pre-existing routing protocols tailor made for it, which are energy unconscious. This paper studies the effect of applying SECA on MIA-DTN and presents a comprehensive analysis with simulation results to justify the proposal.