Study on the effect of network dynamics on opportunistic routing

Abstract

There has been an effort to employ social similarity inferred from user mobility patterns in opportunistic routing solutions to improve forwarding. However, the dynamics of the networks are still not fully considered when devising solutions based on social similarity metrics. To address this issue, we propose two utility functions which consider the daily life routines of users and the intensity of their social interactions to take forwarding decisions: Time-Evolving Contact Duration (TECD) that weights social interactions among nodes considering the duration of contacts; and TECD Importance (TECDi) which estimates the importance of nodes. We compare our utility functions against contact- and social-based solutions, and we show that the use of daily life routines information (i.e., using TECD and TECDi) has a positive effect on opportunistic routing. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.