Delay/disruption tolerant mobile ad hoc networks: latest developments: Research Articles

There is much research activity in the emerging area of delay/disruption tolerant networks (DTN) in the past few years. DTNs pose many new challenges, and protocols designed for wired Internet or wireless mobile ad hoc networks do not work properly in DTNs. Routing is one of the key components in DTNs and the message ferry (MF) approach has been drawn a lot of attention to support routing in DTNs. Besides the underlying routing protocols, issues in transport layer are also very important and need to be addressed for DTNs. Recently, many new routing protocols, including unicast using the MF approach, inter-region routing and multicast, have appeared in the literature. There are also a few works addressing issues in the transport layer. This paper provides an overview on recent developments including message ferrying, multicast support, inter-region routing, and transport layer issues. It also points out some open research issues and intends to motivate new research and development in this area. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.