Yue Cao

Routing in Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networks: A Taxonomy, Survey and Challenges

The introduction of intelligent devices with short range wireless communication techniques has motivated the development of Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) during the last few years. However, traditional end-to-end based routing algorithms designed for MANETs are not much robust in the challenged networks suffering from frequent disruption, sparse network density and limited device capability. Such challenged networks, also known as Intermittently Connected Networks (ICNs) adopt the Store-Carry-Forward (SCF) behavior arising from the mobility of mobile nodes for message relaying. In this article, we consider the term ICNs as Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networks (DTNs) for the purpose of generalization, since DTNs have been envisioned for different applications with a large number of proposed routing algorithms. Motivated by the great interest from the research community, we firstly review the existing unicasting issue of DTNs because of its extensive research stage. Then, we also address multicasting and anycasting issues in DTNs considering their perspectives. A detail survey based on our taxonomy over the period from 2006 to 2010 is not only provided but also a comparison is given. We further identify the remaining challenges and open issues followed by an evaluation framework proposed for routing in DTNs. Finally, we summarize our contribution with three future research topics highlighted.

Geographic-Based Spray-and-Relay (GSaR): An Efficient Routing Scheme for DTNs

In this paper, we design and evaluate the proposed geographic-based spray-and-relay (GSaR) routing scheme in delay/disruption-tolerant networks. To the best of our knowledge, GSaR is the first spray-based geographic routing scheme using historical geographic information for making a routing decision. Here, the term spray means that only a limited number of message copies are allowed for replication in the network. By estimating a movement range of destination via the historical geographic information, GSaR expedites the message being sprayed toward this range, meanwhile prevents that away from and postpones that out of this range. As such, the combination of them intends to fast and efficiently spray the limited number of message copies toward this range and effectively spray them within range, to reduce the delivery delay and increase the delivery ratio. Furthermore, GSaR exploits delegation forwarding to enhance the reliability of the routing decision and handle the local maximum problem, which is considered to be the challenges for applying the geographic routing scheme in sparse networks. We evaluate GSaR under three city scenarios abstracted from real world, with other routing schemes for comparison. Results show that GSaR is reliable for delivering messages before the expiration deadline and efficient for achieving low routing overhead ratio. Further observation indicates that GSaR is also efficient in terms of a low and fair energy consumption over the nodes in the network.

An Electric Vehicle Charging Management Scheme Based on Publish/Subscribe Communication Framework

Motivated by alleviating CO2 pollution, electric vehicle (EV)-based applications have recently received wide interests from both commercial and research communities by using electric energy instead of traditional fuel energy. Although EVs are inherently with limited traveling distance, such limitation could be overcome by deploying public charging stations (CSs) to recharge EVs battery during their journeys. In this paper we propose a novel communication framework for on-the-move EV charging scenario, based on the Publish/Subscribe (P/S) mechanism for disseminating necessary CS information to EVs, in order for them to make optimized decisions on where to charge. A core part of our communication framework is the utilization of roadside units (RSUs) to bridge the information flow from CSs to EVs, which has been regarded as a type of cost-efficient communication infrastructure. Under this design, we introduce two complementary communication modes of signal protocols, namely, push and pull modes, in order to enable the required information dissemination operation. Both analysis and simulation show the advantage of the pull mode, in which the information is cached at RSUs to support asynchronous communication. We further propose a remote reservation service based on the pull mode such that the CS-selection decision making can utilize the knowledge of EVs charging reservation, as published from EVs through RSUs to CSs. Results show that both performances at CS and EV sides are further improved based on using this anticipated information.

A Reliable and Efficient Encounter-Based Routing Framework for Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networks

This paper addresses delay/disruption tolerant networking routing under a highly dynamic scenario, envisioned for communication in vehicular sensor networks (VSNs) suffering from intermittent connection. Here, we focus on the design of a high-level routing framework, rather than the dedicated encounter prediction. Based on an analyzed utility metric to predict nodal encounter, our proposed routing framework considers the following three cases. First, messages are efficiently replicated to a better qualified candidate node, based on the analyzed utility metric related to destination. Second, messages are conditionally replicated if the node with a better utility metric has not been met. Third, messages are probabilistically replicated if the information in relation to destination is unavailable in the worst case. With this framework in mind, we propose two routing schemes covering two major technique branches in literature, namely: 1) encounter-based replication routing and 2) encounter-based spraying routing. Results under the scenario applicable to VSNs show that, in addition to achieving high delivery ratio for reliability, our schemes are more efficient in terms of a lower overhead ratio. Our core investigation indicates that apart from what information to use for encounter prediction, how to deliver messages based on the given utility metric is also important.

Approach-and-Roam (AaR): A Geographic Routing Scheme for Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networks

Considering that delay/disruption-tolerant networks (DTNs) suffer from a large variation of network topology, geographic routing is an alternative scheme that utilizes real-time geographic information instead of network topology information. However, the real-time geographic information of mobile destination is likely unavailable due to sparse network density. With this in mind, we propose a geographic routing scheme by relying on historical geographic information to estimate the movement range of destination. The idea is to make efficient message replication toward this estimated range via the proposed Approach Phase to reduce routing overhead. Meanwhile, the effective message replication within this range is guaranteed via the proposed Roam Phase to increase the message delivery ratio. We further propose a novel scheme to handle the local maximum problem for geographic routing in sparse networks. Simulation results obtained assuming the maps of three real world cities, namely, Helsinki, Finland; Karlsruhe, Germany; and Manhattan, New York City, USA, show an advantage of the proposed Approach-and-Roam (AaR) over the compared algorithms in terms of delivery ratio, average delivery latency, and overhead ratio.

Converge-and-Diverge: A Geographic Routing for Delay/Disruption-Tolerant Networks Using a Delegation Replication Approach

Routing in delay/disruption-tolerant networks (DTNs) is without the assumption of contemporaneous end-to-end connectivity to relay messages. Geographic routing is an alternative approach using real-time geographic information instead of network topology information. However, if considering the mobility of destination, its real-time geographic information is often unavailable due to sparse network density in DTNs. Using historical geographic information to overcome this problem, we propose the converge-and-diverge (CaD) by combining two routing phases that depend on the proximity to the movement range estimated for destination. The key insight is to promote message replication converging to the edge of this range and diverging to the entire area of this range to achieve fast delivery, given limited message lifetime. Furthermore, the concept of delegation replication (DR) is explored to overcome the limitation of routing decisions and the local maximum problem. Evaluation results under the Helsinki city scenario show an improvement of CaD in terms of delivery ratio, average delivery latency, and overhead ratio. Since geographic routing in DTNs has not received much attention, apart from the design of CaD, our novelty also focuses on exploring DR to overcome the limitation of routing decision and the local maximum problem, in addition to enhancing efficiency, as DR originally intended.

QoE-Driven DASH Video Caching and Adaptation at 5G Mobile Edge

In this paper, we present a Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) scheme for enabling network edge-assisted video adaptation based on MPEG-DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP). In contrast to the traditional over-the-top (OTT) adaptation performed by DASH clients, the MEC server at the mobile network edge can capture radio access network (RAN) conditions through its intrinsic Radio Network Information Service (RNIS) function, and use the knowledge to provide guidance to clients so that they can perform more intelligent video adaptation. In order to support such MEC-assisted DASH video adaptation, the MEC server needs to locally cache the most popular content segments at the qualities that can be supported by the current network throughput. Towards this end, we introduce a two-dimensional user Quality-of-Experience (QoE)-driven algorithm for making caching / replacement decisions based on both content context (e.g., segment popularity) and network context (e.g., RAN downlink throughput). We conducted experiments by deploying a prototype MEC server at a real LTE-A based network testbed. The results show that our QoE-driven algorithm is able to achieve significant improvement on user QoE over 2 benchmark schemes.

A Reliable and Efficient Geographic Routing Scheme for Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networks

The research in this letter focuses on geographic routing in Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networks (DTNs), by considering sparse network density. We explore the Delegation Forwarding (DF) approach to overcome the limitation of the geometric metric which requires mobile node moving towards destination, with the Delegation Geographic Routing (DGR) proposed. Besides, we handle the local maximum problem of DGR, by considering nodal mobility and message lifetime. Analysis and evaluation results show that DGR overcomes the limitation of the algorithm based on the given geometric metric. By overcoming the limited routing decision and handling the local maximum problem, DGR is reliable for delivering messages before expiration lifetime. Meanwhile, the efficiency of DGR regarding low overhead ratio is contributed by utilizing DF.

A routing framework for Delay Tolerant Networks based on encounter angle

The concept of Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) has been utilized for wireless sensor networks, mobile ad hoc networks, interplanetary networks, pocket switched networks and suburb networks for developing region. Because of these application prospects, DTNs have received attention from academic community. Whereas only a few state of the art routing algorithms in DTNs address the problem of aborted messages due to the insufficient encounter duration. In order to reduce these aborted messages, we propose a routing framework which consists of two optional routing functions. Specifically, only one of them is activated according to the encounter angle between pairwise nodes. Besides, the copies of the undelivered message carried by most of the nodes in the network are more likely to be cleared out after successful transfer, which reduces the number of unnecessary transmissions for message delivery. By means of the priority for message transmission and deletion in case of the limited network resource, the proposed algorithm achieves the high delivery ratio with low overhead as well as less number of aborted messages due to the insufficient encounter duration, thus is more energy efficient.

Active Congestion Control Based Routing for Opportunistic Delay Tolerant Networks

Opportunistic Networks (ONs) utilize the communication opportunity with a hop-by-hop behavior, and implement communication between encountered nodes based on the Store-and-Forward routing pattern. This approach, which is totally different from the traditional communication model, has received extensive interests from academic community. We consider the ONs are a type of Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) since their routing behavior are quite same regardless of the bundle layer protocol. Until currently, a set of congestion control mechanisms have been proposed in Deterministic DTNs, which is mainly implemented in the network with limited mobility or the static network with scheduled disruption interval. However, regarding the networks with large topology variation, known as Opportunistic DTNs, to design a congestion control mechanism is difficult. In this paper, we propose an active congestion control based routing algorithm that pushes the selected message before the congestion happens. In order to predict the future congestion situation, a corresponding estimation function is designed and our proposed algorithm works based on two asynchronous routing functions, which are scheduled according to the decision of estimation function. Simulation results show our proposed algorithm efficiently utilizes the distributed storage to achieve a quite low overhead ratio and also performs well in the realistic scenario.