Epidemic Strategies in Delay Tolerant Networks from an Energetic Point of View: Main Issues and Performance Evaluation

In this work we investigate Epidemic novel strategies called SNPS and EAER-SNPS applied to a DTN Network. These strategies extend the approach of the basic epidemic routing by using the node density estimation and the nodes energy levels; they adopt the forwarding scheme of the n-Epidemic routing. However, differently from nEpidemic, it applies a dynamic forwarding scheme based on nodes density, that is able to reduce energy consumption and increase message delivery probability. A deep campaign of simulations was carried out in order to verify the effectiveness of the SNPS and EAER-SNPS. Simulation campaigns were conducted to evaluate the message delivery ratio, the average hop count, the average end-to-end delay and the average residual energy. Different mobility scenarios have been considered through the Working Day mobility model and by simulating pedestrians, buses and cars, in order to see how the performance can degrade on the basis of mobility and nodes characteristics.