Performance Comparison of DTN Routing Protocols for Delay Tolerant Networks with Cluster Based Movement Model

Opportunistic Networks or DTN are the class of networks where the nodes do not have contemporaneous connections, but intermittent connections. The main characteristic of DTN packet delivery is large end-to-end path latency and a DTN routing protocols has to cope with frequent disconnections. In this paper we have investigated the performance of four different routing protocols namely Epidemic, Prophet, Maxprop and Spray and Wait (SNW) under cluster based movement model scenario. For the simulation we have used Opportunistic Network Environment (ONE) Simulator. The performance is analyzed on three metrics: Delivery Probability, Overhead Ratio, and Average Latency. From the simulation results obtained it is analyzed that the Maxprop routing protocol gives the best performance in the considered scenario and simulation setting. Maxprop gives best delivery probability of about 0.99 as compared to delivery probability of spray and wait, prophet and epidemic which varies between 0.l45 to 0.55. The average latency of maxprop is minimum whereas Maxprop has second lowest overhead ratio among the considered routing protocols.