An Improved Hybrid Routing Protocol Combining MANET and DTN

Hybrid protocols combining a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) and a delay tolerant network (DTN) have recently been proposed. In these works, a whole network is fragmented, and MANET is generally used for intra-fragment communication, while DTN is used for inter-fragment communication. In this paper, an improved hybrid routing protocol was proposed, wherein virtual source nodes are selected based on the delivery predictability to the destination node if routing path to the destination node is not successfully established using MANET protocol. Then, messages are delivered to the destination node from the original source node and selected virtual source nodes. Performance evaluation results show that the proposed protocol with appropriate selection of delivery predictability threshold values has a better delivery ratio than conventional protocol, at the expense of overhead ratio in the considered parameter setting.