Impact of Heterogeneity on Forwarding Schemes in Opportunistic Networks

In the paper, we concentrate on the influence of heterogeneity on the performance of forwarding algorithms under opportunistic networks. Therefore, we first describe two different heterogeneous network models, and capture the heterogeneity which concern mobile nodes＇ contact dynamics under the individual models and the spatial models. Then we investigate inter-contact time is not fully follow exponential distribution and compare the performance of the delivery delay between direct forwarding protocol and three-hop forwarding protocol under three network models. We illustrate the performance of message delivery delay under the spray and wait protocol and prophet protocol from simulation results. Our simulation results show that the heterogeneity should be considered for the performance of forwarding protocols.