Mobility-Based Routing in Opportunistic Networks

In Opportunistic Networks (OppNets) nodes are only intermittently connected. A complete path from the sender node to the receiver does not exist. Mobile objects exploit direct contact for message transmission without relying on an existing end to end infrastructure. In such networks, routing is a challenging issue. Nevertheless, routing protocols in the mobility-based class of OppNets exploit some context information such as node mobility information and patterns to make forwarding decision, since the effectiveness of routing depends on node mobility. The aim of this research is to identify, evaluate, and compare the mobility-based routing algorithms of OppNets based on the simulation results obtained from published literature. The research findings indicate that mobility-based algorithms are suitable for conditions where network bandwidth and devices are considered significant constraints. They provide average delivery ratio with less resource consumption. In brief, they are ideal when network traffic and resource consumption are taken into consideration.