Ferry Route Design with MAC Protocol in Delay Tolerant Networks

Abstract

Delay Tolerant Networks(DTNs) are occasionally connected networks. They have high latency, long queuing time, limited resources and intermittent connectivity, which are different from traditional networks. They have been proposed to cope with challenges of communication in some extreme or special environments. Due to uncertainty of node mobility, application traffic demand and other factors, it is difficult to provide performance guarantee for a DTN where all nodes move arbitrarily. With controlled mobility, message ferry can be utilized to guarantee the network performance. MAC protocols developed for duty-cycled networks such as B-MAC,S-MAC, employ an extended preamble introduces X-MAC employs shortened preamble approach that retains the advantages of low power listening, namely low power communication, simplicity and a decoupling of transmitter and receiver schedules. Demonstrate through implementation and evaluation that xmac?s shortened preamble approach significantly reduces energy usage at both transmitter and receiver, reduces per-hop latency.