EBC: Encounter Buffer and Contact Duration-Based Routing Protocol in Opportunistic Networks

In the arena of wireless communication, the most recently developed network is Opportunistic Network (OppNet), where communication of messages from the source node to the corresponding destination takes place without any network topology, Internet connectivity, and infrastructure. Messages are sent from one node in the network formed by a node to another using store carry and forward technology if the nodes belong to the same communication domain. In this network, node mobility, and node embedded communication media, that is, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Cellular, are key medium in ultimately delivering data from the source to the intended destination. In such environment, routing of a message from the source node to the destination is a difficult task for the researcher. In this regard, the author proposes a new context-based routing protocol for opportunistic networks, the so-called encounter, buffer, and contact period-based routing protocols (EBCs). The frequency of encounters between two nodes, the size of the node’s buffer, and the duration of each node’s contact are used in this proposed work to choose the next best hop for the message. Simulation results show the superiority of EBC over History-Based Prediction for Routing (HBPR), and Epidemic routing is considered as a benchmark protocol in terms of average latency, hop count, and buffer time average.