Utility-aware data transmission scheme for delay tolerant networks

Social-based routing approaches in delay-tolerant networks have attracted widespread attention in recent years, which attempt to import social behaviors and relations in real scene for node mobility. However, most social-based schemes resort to users' contact history and social relations that are dynamic, causing it so hard to establish stable relations between nodes. In this paper, we propose a utility-aware data transmission scheme which considers both internal property and external contact of nodes. Inspired by the concept of transfer station in real life, we set a central group and choose nodes for message forwarding, which have higher utility, i.e., enough energy, adequate cache, and more nodes encountered during the motivation. Two extensions are proposed also to further reduce the overhead. Simulation results demonstrate the increase in delivery ratio and decrease in overhead ratio, especially in large scale scenarios.