Routing protocol based on social characteristics for opportunistic networks

Abstract Opportunistic networks are derived from delay tolerant networks, where mobile nodes have no end-to-end connections. Nodes are represented by people, which means that opportunistic networks can be regarded as social networks. Human mobility plays an important role in affecting the performance of forwarding protocols in social networks, furthermore, the trajectory of people's movements are driven by social characteristics. However, current routing protocols rely on simple mobility models, and rarely consider social characteristics. Considering two heterogeneous network models, an social opportunistic networks routing (SONR) was proposed which brings an adapted discrete Markov chain into nodes' mobility model and calculates the transition probability between successive status. Comparison was made between Spray, Wait and Epidemic protocol. Simulation show that SONR can improve performance on delivery ratio, delivery latency and network overhead, meanwhile. SONR approaches the performance of Epidemic routing.