POSTER: Using Directional Antennas for Epidemic Routing in DTNs in Practice

In this paper, we investigate the effect of using directional antennas (DA) for routing in Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) where agents move following some realistic mobility patterns. In particular, the performance of classical SIRS epidemic dynamics [1] for routing in DTNs using a combination of omnidirectional antennas (OAs) and DAs is investigated using the SLAW (Selfsimilar Least Action Walk) model [2] for human daily life mobility patterns. We analyze the performance by placing DAs on randomly chosen agents and orient the DAs in randomly chosen directions. The broad goal of this paper is to initiate a study of using directional antennas for routing in DTN in practice.