Replica Reduced Routing Protocol for Intermittent Connected Networks in Emergency Scenarios

Abstract

In an Intermittent Connected Networks / Opportunistic Networks, routing protocols follow store-carry-forward routing mechanism to deliver messages to destination. One of the application scenarios which makes use of opportunistic networks to route the packet from source to destination is an Emergency Search and Rescue operation where rescuer nodes get partitioned frequently and carry out their rescue activities in different locations. As wireless device has a short transmission range, communication between any two partitioned networks occurs only through the node mobility. The Probability based Routing, provides high packet delivery rate with high overhead. In this paper, a new technique called Replica Reduced and Energy-based routing protocol (REB) is proposed to control the replicas and increase the packet delivery ratio in emergency scenarios. Through simulation, this article demonstrates that the proposed system increases delivery rate and reduces overhead and energy consumption considerably, resulting in increased life span of the network.