A Delay-Tolerant Network Routing Algorithm Based on Column Generation

Delay-Tolerant Networks (DTN) model systems that are characterized by intermittent connectivity and frequent partitioning. Routing in DTNs has drawn much research effort recently. Since very different kinds of networks fall in the DTN category, many routing approaches have been proposed. In particular, the routing layer in some DTNs have information about the schedules of contacts between nodes and about data traffic demand. Such systems can benefit from a previously proposed routing algorithm based on linear programming that minimizes the average message delay. This algorithm, however, is known to have performance issues that limit its applicability to very simple scenarios. In this work, we propose an alternative linear programming approach for routing in Delay-Tolerant Networks. We show that our formulation is equivalent to that presented in a seminal work in this area, but it contains fewer LP constraints and has a structure suitable to the application of Column Generation (CG). Simulation shows that our CG implementation arrives at an optimal solution up to three orders of magnitude faster than the original linear program in the considered DTN examples.