A* search based next hop selection for routing in opportunistic networks

Opportunistic network (oppnet) is one of the challenging fields of wireless network. It is an intermittently connected mobile network where nodes are mobile and no end-to-end path exists. Connectivity among nodes is established when they are within the transmission range of each other. If a node has message to communicate and no intermediate node is available, then the message is stored in the node's buffer till an appropriate communication opportunity arises which is known as store-carry-forward paradigm. This paradigm has given Oppnets a new direction in the field of research. In any network, efficient and effective routing is very crucial. In this paper, a novel routing technique has been proposed for Oppnets named as A* based opportunistic routing (A*OR) which uses the A* searching technique to select the best forwarders towards the destination. The proposed protocol is compared with prophet, PRoWait and EDR as a benchmark protocols and is found to perform 19%, 11% and 32% better than prophet, PRoWait and EDR, respectively in terms of delivery probability.