Routing Protocols in Opportunistic Networks

Abstract

Opportunistic networking is an evolution of the classic mobile ad hoc network (MANET). Traditional MANET routing protocols are not able to perform eventual transmission due to lack of an end-to-end path between source and destination. This makes the design of MANET routing protocols significantly more difficult. The aim of opportunistic networking is to provide routing functionality in this intermittently connected environment. This chapter classifies the important existing routing protocols proposed in the literature based on the amount of context information they exploit. It presents a general definition of the term context information for any context-sensitive network communication application. The chapter describes routing in opportunistic networks and also presents a comparative study of protocols. It also describes the context-oblivious class of routing protocols, followed by partially and fully context-aware category protocols. Finally, the chapter presents a discussion of case studies and applications for opportunistic networks.