Design of routing protocol for opportunistic network based on adaptive motion

Abstract

Opportunistic network takes advantage of the contact opportunities introduced by node movement for data transmission. Data is usually piggybacked during the movement of the carrier, which guarantees its independence, however, the system performance is impaired. Inspired from the motion nature of nodes, this paper proposes an adaptive motion based opportunistic routing protocol to address the problem. It develops a data forwarding priority model from the perspective of data communication and determines data transmission rules in combination with node activity range partition scheme. A differential replica transfer strategy is thus proposed to achieve a tradeoff between transmission efficiency and system overhead. A free motion degree model is constructed based on which a utility function is deduced to choose appropriate nodes for data relaying. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves higher packet delivery ratio and less transmission latency while satisfying application requirements and restraining network overhead.