Propagating status aware buffer management mechanism in Delay Tolerant Networks

With the manner of storing-carrying-forwarding, the packets in the Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) are transmitted flexibly. In order to improve the network performance, the limited buffer resources should be utilized reasonably. According to the estimation on the status of packet propagating, a novel buffer management mechanism is proposed in this paper. Based on the evaluation of packet spreading degree and meeting probability, the propagating status is determined in a distributed way; furthermore, the importance degree of packets are obtained. Consequently, the limited buffer can be managed properly. Results show that the network performance can be improved effectively through our proposed mechanism.