A message priority routing protocol for delay tolerant networks (DTN) in disaster areas

Abstract

A delay tolerant network (DTN) is a mobile wireless network that is characterized by frequent partitions and potentially long message delivery delays. Compared with conventional networks, the distinguishing feature is that there is no end-to-end connectivity between source and destination. In this paper, we assume that an earthquake has occurred in a city and roads and nodes have been damaged in the disaster. In this situation, we found performance degradation of existing DTN routing protocols due to damage. To address this problem, we propose a DTN message priority routing protocol. In a disaster situation, the proposed protocol was able to deliver more messages than existing DTN protocols, with a lower overhead ratio and lower latency. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.