Uncovering vicinity properties in disruption-tolerant networks

作者：Phe Neau Tiphaine^*; de Amorim Marcelo Dias; Conan Vania

来源：Computer Networks, 2014, 73: 210-223.

DOI：10.1016/j.comnet.2014.08.004

• Disruption-tolerant networks
• Opportunistic networks
• Vicinity characterization
• Aggregated analysis

Most existing proposals in the area of disruption-tolerant networking rely on the binary assertion that when two nodes are not in contact, they are necessarily in intercontact. Such a monolithic notion is, in our opinion, too limitative. In this paper, we advocate the use of the neighborhood of a node beyond one hop to help design more efficient communication solutions. We provide a formal definition of kappa-vicinity and associated measures, namely kappa-contact and kappa-intercontact. These measures allow better understanding the proximity between nodes as they are not restrained solely to the direct contact situation. We observe unexpected behaviors in kappa-contact distributions and point out their dependency on node density. We also observe that a significant share of pairs of nodes spend a non-negligible amount of time in each other's vicinity without coming into direct contact We show then that using a small kappa (between 2 and 4) is enough to capture a significant amount of communication possibilities that are neglected by existing approaches. Finally, we provide a rule of thumb to derive the population in the kappa-vicinity by observing only the direct contacts of a node.

• 出版日期2014-11-14