Multicast routing protocol for Vehicular Delay-Tolerant Networks

Disruptions, high dynamism and no end-to-end communication are some of the Vehicular Delay-Tolerant Networks (VDTNs) main characteristics. This paper describes the implementation of a new VDTN multicast routing protocol which makes use of knowledge about previous encounters to estimate congestion and density and better spread data bundles and limit the number of copies to reduce overhead. After a brief introduction to Delay-Tolerant Networks, VDTNs, and protocols, the new multicast routing protocol, named NewVDTN, is described. It will be compared against Epidemic Multicast. The protocols were implemented and tested on The Opportunistic Network Environment simulator, concluding that NewVDTN shows a similar or better delivery ratio and delay with an enormous reduction of overhead, as compared with Epidemic Multicast.