An Improved Routing Algorithm Based on Social Link Awareness in Delay Tolerant Networks

The routing efficiency in delay tolerant networks is degraded due to intermittent connection and high latency. Additionally, socially selfish nodes in social networks refuse to provide message forwarding service since there are limited resources. To solve these problems, an improved routing algorithm based on the social link awareness is proposed. In this algorithm, multiple social features of the nodes’ behaviors are utilized to quantify the nodes pairs’ social links. The social links of the nodes pairs are computed based on their encounter history. These social links can be used to construct the friendship communities of the nodes. The intra-community and inter-community forwarding mechanisms are implemented to raise the successful delivery ratio with low overhead and decrease the transmission delay. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm shortens the routing delay and increases the successful delivery ratio, thereby improving the routing efficiency.