Performance Evaluation of Mobility Management Scheme in DTN

Standard ad hoc routing protocols do not work in intermittently connected networks since end-to-end paths may not exist in such networks. A store-and-forward approach [7] has been proposed for such networks. The nodes in such networks move around. Thus, the proposed delay tolerant network (DTN) architecture [7] needs to be enhanced with a mobility management scheme to ensure that nodes that wish to correspond with mobile hosts have a way of determining their whereabouts. The mobile hosts may move a short distance and hence remain within the vicinity of a DTN name registrar (DNR) (one communication link away) or they may move far away (multiple communication links away). In this paper, we present the mobility management scheme we propose for DTN environments. In addition, we provide simple analytical formulae to evaluate the latency required for performing location updates, and the useful utilization that each node can use for data transfer assuming that the communication links between nodes are periodically available for a short period of time. Our simple analytical model allows us to draw insights into the impact of near/far movements on the useful utilization.