Integration of Fixed and Mobile Infrastructure for Message Passing in Opportunistic Networks

In an Opportunistic networks (OppNets), an established end-to-end connected route between the source anddestination nodes may never exist, making the routing of messages achallenge. However, using some infrastructures, it is possible to create an OppNet architecture similar to that of a well-connected network. This paper focuses on combining the benefits of infostation and message ferry to design a novelrouting schemecalled Horizontal and Vertical ferry (HVF), which also includes an acknowledgment method for message delivery that has not been considered in any of the existing approaches that uses infostation or message ferry. Through simulations, the performance of the proposed HVF scheme is evaluated and compared against that ofthe Global Ferry scheme (GFS), chosen as benchmark,in terms of number of messages delivered, overhead ratio, average latency, and average buffer time, showing that HVFoutperforms the GFS in both the normaland ferry failure scenarios