Social characteristics-based routing algorithm for a mobile social network

Utilization of social characteristics presents a modern approach in the design of routing protocols for Mobile Social Networks. In this paper, we present a novel routing algorithm called the Social Characteristics-based Distributed Routing Algorithm (SCDRA) for a Mobile Social Network. SCDRA explores community and friendship as social features to effectively route messages. In SCDRA, nodes develop their community in a distributed way based on the concept of a familiar set. Merging of communities of nodes is governed by certain rules. Friendship in SCDRA evolves based on various factors like inter-contact duration, frequency of encounters and successful delivery of messages forwarded in a few past time intervals between the nodes. Routing of messages is accomplished by utilizing community and friendship as social characteristics. Extensive simulation studies performed show that the proposed algorithm performs better when compared to existing algorithms such as Bubble rap, SMART and EpSoc for performance metrics like delivery ratio, overhead ratio and average delivery latency in various scenarios.