A time-considered multicast routing scheme based on social differences in delay-tolerant networks

Abstract

In delay-tolerant networks (DTNs), multicast is widely used in many group communication scenarios as it can make full use of network resources and provide high data delivery ratio. As node behaviours demonstrate social characteristics in DTNs, in this paper, a multicast routing scheme based on social difference (SDMR) is proposed. SDMR considers the social differences between nodes, including both the similarity and the centrality differences. SDMR chooses the nodes with greater social differences to forward data, which can expand the data transmission range and increase the data delivery ratio to multicast destinations efficiently. Considering the critical role of the recent contact history, we further propose a time-considered multicast routing scheme based on social difference (SDMRT), which can improve the transmission efficiency further. Through extensive trace-driven simulation with the Infocom06 trace data, it shows that SDMR cannot only ensure high data delivery ratio and low delay, but also reduce the transmission cost greatly compared to other existing protocols. Moreover, SDMRT can further reduce the transmission cost of SDMR without comprising data delivery ratio and delay.