A study to evaluate the data dissemination capabilities of the Probabilistic and Epidemic routing protocols in mobile ad hoc delay tolerant networks

Abstract

The inability to ensure a full connection of the end to end path between the source and the destination is a problem prevalent in a delayed tolerant network. Traditional reactive and proactive routing protocols designed for the Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks (MANETs) have failed to fulfil the expectations with regard to performance in environments where the connection is intermittent. Various routing protocols namely, Epidemic and Probabilistic have been proposed by researchers to overcome this problem. The objective of this study was to evaluate the functions of the Epidemic and the Probabilistic routing protocols combined with real world mobility models and to suggest the best combinations of those two entities, to be considered for research studies in mobile delay tolerant networks. To fulfil the objectives the behaviour of the two routing protocols were studied by associating them with mobility models by using the JiST SWANS simulator. Random Way Point and Gauss Markov were the mobility models used to simulate the movement patterns of the communicating nodes. The testing was carried out on the JiST SWANS platform and results were collected for the delivery ratio and the message latency. The analysis of the results was used to evaluate the performance of the two routing protocols. Thus the Epidemic and Probabilistic routing protocols were implemented and evaluated successfully, achieving the objectives of the study. With the results received, from the different comparisons with the different combinations of mobility models and routing protocols, it was concluded that the Probabilistic routing protocol performed better with the Random Way Point mobility model than the Epidemic routing protocol in terms of delivery ratio and latency.