Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Introduction
Opportunistic Networks (OppNets) [
1
] are considered as the most recent evolu-
tions of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) in present times. They have all the
challenges and issues similar to MANETs and the research in this area is mainly
focused on MANETs application areas. They are also considered as the subclass of
Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) [
2
-
4
]. In such type of networks, it is assumed
that a continuous end-to-end path between the sender and the receiver rarely exists
or is highly unstable as it can exist only for a very short unpredictable time period.
Thus, the existing ad hoc network and internet routing protocols fail to deliver
messages in OppNets since they presume a fixed end-to-end path between the
sender and the receiver node before the delivery of the message. The network
topology is dynamic and nodes do not have any prior knowledge about the network
configuration and topology [
5
,
6
].
OppNets facilitate communication between heterogeneous devices in network
environments where disconnections and reconnections are very frequent due to
short radio range and low power of nodes. Network connectivity is poor due to the
high mobility of nodes and the intermittent links between them. Network partition
and intermittent connectivity are considered as characteristics of OppNets rather
than a problem, and thus the source to destination reliable message delivery is not
guaranteed in such networks. Due to these issues OppNets are emerging as a very
interesting research area among the research community [
6
,
7
].
The routing and forwarding of messages in OppNets can be classified as
infrastructure based and infrastructure less on the basis of the infrastructure used in
the network [
8
]. This chapter mainly focuses on developing a routing protocol for
infrastructure-based OppNets. The network architecture considered and the pro-
tocol proposed in this paper uses both fixed as well as mobile infrastructure for the
communication.
The rest of the chapter is organized as follows.
Background and related work
presents the background and related works carried out in the area of routing
protocols for infrastructure-based OppNets.
The protocol
gives the detailed
description about the working of the proposed protocol's algorithm.
Conclusion
and future work
gives the final conclusive remarks and provides some insight on
future work.
Background and Related Work
As routing is one of the major areas of concern in OppNets, various routing
protocols such as Infostation Model [
9
], SWIM [
10
], Data-MULE [
11
], MF [
12
]to
name a few have been proposed. A brief literature survey of these existing routing
protocols in infrastructure-based OppNets has been discussed in this section.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search