A Storage-Friendly Routing Scheme in Intermittently Connected Mobile Network

Considering the constraints brought by mobility and resources, it is important for routing protocols to efficiently deliver data in intermittently connected mobile networks. Different from previous works that use the knowledge of previous encounters to predict future contacts, we propose a storage-friendly region-based protocol, i.e., RENA, in this paper. Instead of using temporal information, RENA builds routing tables based on regional movement history, which avoids excessive storage for tracking encounter history. We validate the generality of RENA through a time-variant community mobility model with parameters extracted from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) trace and a vehicular network based on eight bus routes in the city of Helsinki, Finland. The comprehensive simulation results show that RENA is not only storage friendly but also more efficient than epidemic routing, the restricted replication protocol spray and wait (SNW), and the encounter-based protocol resource allocation protocol for intentional delay-tolerant networks under various conditions.