BeeAntDTN: A nature inspired routing protocol for delay tolerant networks

Delay Tolerant Network is a network where there is either no end to end connection between the source and the destination or the connections are infrequent and very short in terms of delay. To ensure the messages delivery in such network, a new mechanism called store-carry and forward has been implemented, which enables DTN nodes to store received messages in their buffer and wait for an opportunity to deliver them to their final destination or to another hop in order to carry them closer to their destinations. The intermittent connections make traditional routing protocols that are based on the principle of end-to-end unadaptable in this type of environment. Different routing protocols have been proposed for the DTN environment as routings; Epidemic, Spray and Wait, ProPHET, etc. In this paper, we propose a routing strategy called BeeAntDTN adaptable to DTN networks to increase the messages delivery ratio with a minimal overhead. BeeAntDTN is inspired by the foraging behavior of insects; collecting information on the food source by the bees colony and the search for the shortest path from a food source to the nest in Ants colony. THE ONE simulator is used to check the performance of the BeeAntDTN protocol compared to the standard protocols, namely Epidemic, Spray and Wait, ProPHET. Simulation results show that the proposed approach BeeAntDTN improves the messages delivery ratio and generates a very low overhead compared to other routing protocols.