A Study on Comparative Analysis of End-to-End Routing and Opportunistic Routing

摘要

DTN (Delay/Disruption-Tolerant Networking) aims to realize efficient and reliable end-to-end communication even when communication links among nodes are intermittently connected due to several reasons such as unstable wireless connectivity and dynamic network topology. It is well known that end-to-end routing is suitable for networks with non-intermittent (i.e., always connected) communication links. Also, it is well known that opportunistic routing is suitable for networks with highly intermittent communication links since the end-to-end path between the source and the destination nodes is not likely to exist. In this paper, we address the research question - for a given level of link intermittency, which of end-to-end routing and opportunistic routing is better than the other in terms of the average end-to-end message delivery delay? We try to answer this question through mathematical analysis. Specifically, we analytically derive average end-to-end message delivery delays with the end-to-end routing and the epidemic routing.