Title: On social networking in intermittently connected networks

Authors: Ahmed B. Altamimi; T. Aaron Gulliver

Addresses: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada; Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering Department, University of Hail, Hail, Saudi Arabia ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

Abstract: An intermittently connected network (ICN) is defined as a mobile network that uses cooperation between nodes to facilitate communication. This cooperation consists of nodes carrying the messages of other nodes in order to deliver it to the destination. An ICN does not require an infrastructure and does not track message routing, which is an attractive networking environment. However, delivering messages with low overhead is challenging when there is no routing information or networking infrastructure. In this work, social networking is exploited to obtain a high delivery rate while maintaining a low overhead ratio. This is achieved by allowing all communities participate in message delivery. Previously, only the source and destination communities were considered for this task, whereas in this work all communities participate. Results are presented which show that having all communities involved in message delivery in an ICN can greatly improve the probability of message delivery.

Keywords: intermittently connected networks; ICN; social networking; delivery rate; overhead ratio; message delivery.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCNDS.2015.072398

International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, 2015 Vol.15 No.4, pp.336 - 349

Received: 22 Apr 2014
Accepted: 08 Mar 2015
Published online: 12 Oct 2015 *

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