| Delay tolerant networks (DTNs) are occasionally-connected networks that may suffer from frequent partitions. DTNs provide service despite long end to end delays or infrequent connectivity. One fundamental problem in DTNs is routing messages from their source to their destination. DTNs differ from the Internet in that disconnections are the norm instead of the exception. Representative DTNs include sensor-based networks using scheduled intermittent connectivity, terrestrial wireless networks that cannot ordinarily maintain end-to-end connectivity, satellite networks with moderate delays and periodic connectivity, underwater acoustic networks with moderate delays and frequent interruptions due to environmental factors, and vehicular networks with cyclic but non-deterministic connectivity.The focus of this dissertation is on routing protocols that send messages in DTNs. When no connected path exists between the source and the destination of the message, other nodes may relay the message to the destination. This dissertation covers routing protocols in DTNs with both deterministic and non-deterministic mobility respectively. In DTNs with deterministic and cyclic mobility, we proposed the first routing protocol that is both scalable and delivery guaranteed. In DTNs with non-deterministic mobility, numerous heuristic protocols are proposed to improve the routing performance. However, none of those can provide a theoretical optimization on a particular performance measurement. In this dissertation, two routing protocols for non-deterministic DTN are proposed, which minimizes delay and maximizes delivery rate on different scenarios respectively. First, in DTNs with non-deterministic and cyclic mobility, an optimal single-copy forwarding protocol which minimizes delay is proposed. In DTNs with non-deterministic mobility, an optimal multi-copy forwarding protocol is proposed, which maximizes delivery rate under the constraint that the number of copies per message is fixed. Simulation evaluations using both real and synthetic trace are conducted to compare the proposed protocols with the existing ones. |
