Optimizing Bulk Transfer Size and Scheduling for Efficient Buffer Management in Mobile Opportunistic Networks

Mobile Opportunistic Networks (MONs) are characterized by intermittent connectivity with long isolation period, and nodes following redundant transmissions for reliable message delivery. This often leads to unnecessary buffer occupancy, preventing new messages from getting replicated due to small contact duration and low bandwidth, or leading to packet drop under constrained buffer. Although attempts have been made to mitigate buffer congestion, the existing schemes are localized, are slow to react, or are specific to a routing scheme. Moreover, they rely on message exchanges to obtain buffer state/occupancy, thereby incurring additional overhead. In this paper, we first develop a generalized probabilistic forwarding model where the forwarding probability denotes the likelihood of a message to get forwarded to the encountered node. Based on the forwarding probability, we develop a congestion indicator and predict the point of congestion using the Kalman filter. Using this, a node can decide the optimal number and the exact set of messages to replicate, which leads to an optimal performance with minimal packet drop and overhead. Simulation results using a synthetic mobility model and a real-life mobility trace show that the proposed scheme outperforms the existing schemes.