Routing Protocols for Delay Tolerant Networks: A Reference Architecture and a Thorough Quantitative Evaluation

In this paper, we propose a reference architecture for Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) routing protocols and a thorough quantitative evaluation of many protocols proposed in the literature. We categorize DTN protocols according to their use of the three techniques that are the key elements of our reference architecture: queue management, forwarding and replication. Queue management orders and manages the messages in the node's buffer; forwarding selects the messages to be delivered when there is a contact; and finally, replication bounds the number of replicas in the network. Contrary to most previous papers, where either only qualitative comparisons have been presented or only a single category of protocols has been analyzed, in our work, we discuss the results of our experimental activity on many of the DTN protocols in the literature. Our results, which have been obtained both using synthetic and real mobility traces, show that an effective combination of the proposed techniques can significantly improve the performance of the protocols in terms of delivery ratio, overhead and delay.