Using Stationary Relay Nodes (Thrown Boxes) to Maximize Message Forwarding Performance in Delay-Tolerant Networks

This paper addresses the efficiency on message forwarding over heterogeneous nodes in DTNs. Among the approaches for routing protocols in DTNs, the strategy of deploying the stationary relay nodes called 'thrown boxes' is considered for increasing network performance efficiently. Till now, few studies have provided routing solutions for thrown-box-based network paradigms in the DTN research field. The technical content of this paper includes three parts. Firstly, this study considers the deployment of thrown boxes that can assist in message delivery in delay-tolerant networks. A utility-based algorithm is applied to make the message forwarding decision between two nodes whenever they are in contact. Secondly, we study where to appropriately deploy thrown boxes under various scenarios. Finally, this study runs simulations to evaluate the proposed scheme in terms of message delivery probability. Performance results show that the proposed algorithm achieves high performances and thrown boxes play an important role in message forwarding performance.