Information Propagation Speed in Mobile and Delay Tolerant Networks

Abstract

Recent research has highlighted the necessity of developing routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks where end-to-end multi-hop paths may not exist and communication routes may only be available through time and mobility. Depending on the context, these networks are commonly referred as Intermittently Connected Mobile Networks (ICNs) or Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networks (DTNs).Conversely, little is known about the inherent properties of such networks, and consequently, performance evaluations are often limited to comparative simulations (using mobility models or actual traces).The goal of this paper is to increase our understanding of possible performances of DTNs. After introducing our formal model, we use analytical tools to derive theoretical upper-bounds of the information propagation speed in wireless mobile networks. We also present some numerical simulations to illustrate the accuracy of the bounds in numerous scenarios.

The Tempo-Spatial Information Dissemination Properties of Mobile Opportunistic Networks with Levy Mobility

“…This is different from most existing works [3], [8], [9] that employ the random waypointlike model or other independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) models.…”

“…Considering the special characteristics of mobile opportunistic networks, [3] derives the theoretical upper bound of the speed of information propagation between the sourcedestination pairs that can communicate using any routing algorithm; [4] develops a new framework to characterize the distribution of the so-called completion time, i.e., the time for the information spread to reach a fraction of the nodes; [5] formally defines the diameter for any mobile opportunistic network as the number of hops needed to achieve a high proportion (e.g. 99%) of success rate of flooding under any time constraint and provides an understanding of the performance of all algorithms with regard to hops and delays.…”

“…Nowadays, a lot of effort has been made to enhance the forwarding performance of mobile opportunistic networks in terms of reducing the delivery latency or increasing the transmission success ratio [1], [2]; some analytical results on performance limits with respect to the propagation speed [3], [4], hop-number [5], connectivity [6], and delay-capacity tradeoff [7], have been obtained, which offer insights on the efficiency of data delivery between source-destination pairs, or on the network throughput.…”

Data fusion prolongs the lifetime of mobile sensing networks

“…Zhang et al (2007) developed ODEs as a fluid limit of Markovian model to study the performance metrics of the epidemic family. They derived closedform results of the work (Haas and Small, 2006) On the other hand, when the node density becomes dense, the dissemination process of epidemic routing is just wave-like propagation as discussed in Jacquet et al (2010), they gave lower bounds on the asymptotic broadcast delay and upper bounds on the asymptotic messages dissemination speed by using probabilistic journey analysis. Based on the percolation theory, the authors of Kong and Yeh (2008) drew the conclusion that the delivery delay scaled linearly with the Euclidean distance between the source and destination in a subcritical regime; and the delay scaled sub-linearly with the distance in a supercritical regime.…”

A framework for performance analysis of geographic delay-tolerant routing

“…In addition to the delivery delay, an analysis of geographic routing protocols can also study the time-distance relationship in packet forwarding. For this, Jacquet et al [16] have presented an upper bound on the information propagation speed in very sparse networks. While we use the time-distance relationship in our analysis, the results by Jacquet et al cannot be used since we describe systems with significantly higher node densities.…”