Max-Pivot Routing for Opportunistic Networks

Opportunistic networks are challenging types of networks where network connections are imminent. Network topologies are dynamic and can rapidly change. A path between a source node and a destination node may or may not exist, the network can be disconnected. This type of behavior observed under opportunistic networks makes classical networking solutions impractical. Thus, traditional routing algorithms are not suitable for such networks and will not be useful. Although flooding might be seen as the best solution to reach a destination under opportunistic networks, flooding solutions’ extensive usage of network resources is an extreme overhead. In this paper, maxpivot routing for opportunistic networks is proposed and described. With max-pivot routing, it is observed that the induced network traffic is significantly reduced while still achieving the benefits of a flooding based routing. The performance comparisons of max-pivot routing and flooding based routing methods show that max-pivot routing can be a successful routing method for opportunistic networks.