Routing in intermittently connected mobile ad hoc networks: overview

Intermittently Connected Mobile Ad hoc Networks (ICMAN), is a special group of MANET in which source nodes and destination nodes are intermittently connected. These networks are also referred to as delay/disruption tolerant networks as the applications in this networks, must tolerate delays beyond conventional IP forwarding delays. Routing in ICMANs is a challenging task, as there does not exist a complete path from source to destination. For this network, researchers proposed many routing approaches. These approaches use the information like contact history, contact patterns, encounter time rates, utility functions, location information etc. to forward the message to the successive nodes so as to make it reach the destination. The recent routing protocols and algorithms are discussed in this article.