Scaling Properties of Delay Tolerant Networks in Correlated Motion Patterns

Mobile wireless networks with intermittent connectivity, often called Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networks (DTNs), have recently received a lot of attention because of their efficiency in various application scenarios where delay is noncritical. It has been shown that DTN routing and transport protocols can benefit from node mobility by letting the nodes carry and forward data to overcome partial connectivity. The scalability of DTN protocols is very important for protocol design and evaluation. In particular, the authors need models that allow one to predict the performance of DTN as a function of node mobility behavior (e.g., inter-contact times). Yet, so far little work has been done to develop a framework that formalizes DTN performance as a function of motion behavior.