Buffer scheme optimization of epidemic routing in delay tolerant networks

In delay tolerant networks (DTNs), delay is inevitable; thus, making better use of buffer space to maximize the packet delivery rate is more important than delay reduction. In DTNs, epidemic routing is a well-known routing protocol. However, epidemic routing is very sensitive to buffer size. Once the buffer size in nodes is insufficient, the performance of epidemic routing will be drastically reduced. In this paper, we propose a buffer scheme to optimize the performance of epidemic routing on the basis of the Lagrangian and dual problem models. By using the proposed optimal buffer scheme, the packet delivery rate in epidemic routing is considerably improved. Our simulation results show that epidemic routing with the proposed optimal buffer scheme outperforms the original epidemic routing in terms of packet delivery rate and average end-to-end delay. It is worth noting that the improved epidemic routing needs much less buffer size compared to that of the original epidemic routing for ensuring the same packet delivery rate. In particular, even though the buffer size is very small (e.g., 50), the packet delivery rate in epidemic routing with the proposed optimal buffer scheme is still 95.8%, which can satisfy general communication demand.