Routing in Opportunistic Networks

摘要

In Opportunistic Networks (OppNets), mobile devices transmit messages by exploiting the direct contacts, without the need of an end-to-end infrastructure. Disconnections of nodes and high churn rates are normal features of opportunistic networks. Hence, routing is one of the main challenges in this environment. In this article, we provide a survey of the main routing approaches in OppNets and classify them into three classes: context-oblivious, mobility-based, and social context-aware routing. We emphasize the role of context information in forwarding data in OppNets, and evaluate the relative performance of the three routing techniques. Finally, we present how context-based information is used to route data in a specific subclass of OppNets: Sensor Actor Networks (SANETs).