Energy efficient delay tolerant network routing protocols: A comparative study

One of the prominent problems of the Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) is the high delay occurring in the message delivery. As there is absence of complete path from source to destination in the network, these networks are often susceptible to high delays. In DTNs, one of the primary objective is to establish end-to-end communication path between the nodes in the heterogeneous environment e Factors such as discharge of batteries and link failure lead to frequent disconnection in these networks. The amount of energy dissipated in the network is highly dependent on the message routing and node mobility. Therefore, developing an energy efficient routing protocol is a key issue in DTNs. A plethora of routing algorithms for DTNs is developed, but only few of them take energy constraint into consideration. The challenge to maintain the high reliability of network in the presence of frequent topology changes in DTNs has garnered immense interest from the researchers to further explore the area. This article reviews the some of the state-of-the-art routing protocols of the DTNs. We have also compared the performance of these algorithms in the light of energy consumption.