Lightweight opportunistic routing forwarding strategy based on Markov chain

Abstract

A lightweight opportunistic routing forwarding strategy (MOR) was proposed based on Markov chain.In the scheme,the execute process of network was divided into a plurality of equal time period,and the random encounter state of node in each time period was represented by activity degree.The state sequence of a plurality of continuous time period constitutes a discrete Markov chain.The activity degree of encounter node was estimated by Markov model to predict its state of future time period,which can enhance the accuracy of activity degree estimation.Then,the method of comprehensive evaluating forwarding utility was designed based on the activity degree of node and the average encounter interval.MOR used the utility of node for making a routing forwarding decision.Each node only maintained a state of last time period and a state transition probability matrix,and a vector recording the average encounter interval of nodes.So,the routing forwarding decision algorithm was simple and efficient,low time and space complexity.Furthermore,the method was proposed to set optimal number of the message copy based on multiple factors,which can effectively balance the utilization of network resources.Results show that compared with existing algorithms,MOR algorithm can effectively increase the delivery ratio and reduce the delivery delay,and lower routing overhead ratio.

Keywords

• opportunistic network;Markov chain;activity degree;average encounter interval;message copy