Evolution of various controlled replication routing schemes for opportunistic networks

Abstract

Opportunistic network is a recent evolution in the wireless community; they constitute basically through cooperation & coordination a special type of wireless mobile adhoc networks. These networks are formed instantaneously in a random manner, provided the basic elements of networks exist in vicinity or approachable limits. In such networks, most of the time there does not exist an end to end path, contact is opportunity based, and, could break soon after discovery. There are many realistic scenarios fitting to this situation, like wildlife tracking sensor networks, military networks, vehicular ad hoc networks to mention a few. To transmit information under such circumstances/scenarios researchers have proposed various efficient forwarding (single copy), replication routing and controlled based schemes. In this paper, we propose to explore, investigate and analyze most of the schemes [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] and present the findings of the said scheme by consolidating critical parameters and issues and suggest through our study the possible future options and scopes. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011.