NPLP: An Improved Routing-Forwarding Strategy Utilizing Node Profile and Location Prediction for Opportunistic Networks

Abstract

Opportunistic networks are considered as the promising network structures to implement traditional and typical infrastructure-based communication by enabling smart mobile devices in the networks to contact with each other within a fixed communication area. Because of the intermittent and unstable connections between sources and destinations, message routing and forwarding in opportunistic networks have become challenging and troublesome problems recently. In this paper, to improve the data dissemination environment, we propose an improved routing-forwarding strategy utilizing node profile and location prediction for opportunistic networks, which mainly includes three continuous phases: the collecting and updating of routing state information, community detection and optimization and node location prediction. Each mobile node in the networks is able to establish a network routing matrix after the entire process of information collecting and updating. Due to the concentrated population in urban areas and relatively few people in remote areas, the distribution of location prediction roughly presents a type of symmetry in opportunistic networks. Afterwards, the community optimization and location prediction mechanisms could be regarded as an significant foundation for data dissemination in the networks. Ultimately, experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm could slightly enhance the delivery ratio and substantially degrade the network overhead and end-to-end delay as compared with the other four routing strategies.