Random Walk Based Key Nodes Discovery in Opportunistic Networks

In opportunistic networks, temporary nodes choose neighbor nodes to forward messages while communicating. However, traditional forward mechanisms don't take the importance of nodes into consideration while forwarding. In this paper, we assume that each node has a status indicating its importance, and temporary nodes choose the most important neighbors to forward messages. While discovering important neighbors, we propose a binary tree random walk based algorithm. We analyze the iteration number and communication cost of the proposed algorithm, and they are much less than related works. The simulation experiments validate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.