Energy-Aware Social-based Routing in Opportunistic Networks

In particular types of Delay-Tolerant Networks (DTN) such as Opportunistic Mobile Networks, node connectivity is transient. For this reason, traditional routing mechanisms are no longer suitable. New approaches use social relations between mobile users as a criterion for the routing process. We argue that in such an approach, nodes with high social popularity may quickly deplete their energy resources - and, therefore, might be unwilling to participate in the routing process. We show that social-based routing algorithms such as BUBBLE Rap are prone to this behavior, and introduce energy awareness as an important criterion in the routing decision. We present experimental results showing that our approach delivers performances similar to BUBBLE Rap, whilst balancing the energy consumption between nodes in the network.