Pervasive intelligent routing in content centric delay tolerant networks

Abstract

This paper introduces a Swarm-Intelligence based Routing protocol (SIR) that aims to efficiently route information in content centric Delay Tolerant Networks (CCDTN) also dubbed pocket switched networks. First, this paper formalizes the notion of optimal path in CCDTN and introduces an original and efficient algorithm to process these paths in dynamic graphs. The properties and some invariant features of these optimal paths are analyzed and derived from several real traces. Then, this paper shows how optimal path in CCDTN can be found and used from a fully distributed swarm-intelligence based approach of which the global intelligent behavior (i.e. shortest path discovery and use) emerges from simple peer to peer interactions applied during opportunistic contacts. This leads to the definition of the SIR routing protocol of which the consistency, efficiency and performances are demonstrated from intensive representative simulations.