Max-Util: A utility-based routing algorithm for a vehicular delay tolerant network using historical information

Abstract

A vehicular delay tolerant network (VDTN) has emerged as special type of delay tolerant network (DTN), characterized by the non-existence of end-to-end connectivity between different source nodes and destination nodes thereby diminishing the possibility of delivering messages to the destination node. Hence, routing becomes a vital issue in VDTN. In this paper, a utility-based routing algorithm (Max-Util) for a VDTN has been proposed. This algorithm exploits the historical information of a node for computing the utility of a node to take a decision to forward a message among nodes. This history comprises the past encounters of a node with destination and relay nodes, the contact duration between nodes and the remaining buffer size of a node in contact. Our evaluations show that, Max-Util performs better in terms of message delivery ratio, overhead ratio and average delivery latency as compared to some existing DTN routing approaches like PRoPHET and Spray-and-Wait.