Improving DTN Routing Performance Using Many-to-Many Communication: A Performance Modeling Study

TL;DR

This paper presents an analytical model for DTN delivery delay using epidemic routing with Many-to-Many communication, showing significant delay improvements over traditional methods in high contention scenarios.

Contribution

First analytical modeling of DTN delivery delay with M2M communication, validated by simulations, demonstrating improved performance over one-to-one communication.

Findings

M2M communication reduces delivery delay in high contention DTNs.

The analytical model accurately predicts delay performance.

Simulations confirm M2M's advantage over CSMA in DTNs.

Abstract

Delay-Tolerant Networks (DTNs) have emerged as an exciting research area with a number of useful applications. Most of these applications would benefit greatly by a reduction in the message delivery delay experienced in the network. The delay performance of DTNs is adversely affected by contention, especially severe in the presence of higher traffic rates and node densities. Many-to-Many (M2M) communication can handle this contention much better than traditional one-to- one communication employing CSMA. In this paper, for the first time, we analytically model the expected delivery delay of a DTN employing epidemic routing and M2M communication. The accuracy of our model is demonstrated by matching the analytical results against those from simulations. We also show using simulations that M2M communication significantly improves the delay performance (with respect to one-to-one CSMA) for high contention scenarios. We believe our work will enable the effective application of M2M communication to reduce delivery delays in DTNs.