Effective communication for message prioritization in DTN for disaster scenarios

Abstract

When disaster strikes, effective communication is crucial for emergency responses and accessing a victim's location. Using smartphonebased Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) is the prevalent proposed approach to work around network disruptions. One of the challenges in these networks is high-traffic congestion, since buffer limitation produces message drop before they are delivered. In this article, a congestion control strategy using message prioritization is presented for DTNs to increase network resilience facing high message congestion. We measure congestion considering the free space in the buffers of the nodes involved in the routing or by counting the messages deleted from the buffer in a fixed period to improve the availability and immediacy of information for disaster scenarios. We evaluated the proposed strategies using The ONE simulator to test different mobility models and communication protocols. Results show that the strategy improved delivery rate, buffer usage, eliminated messages, overhead, and latency for the highest priority messages. The best results were obtained in terms of latency, which fits our disaster scenario since timely information is vital. The trade-offs are a slightly lower average delivery rate and a decrease in the lowest priority message delivery rate.

All about Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) Contributions to Future Internet

“…Disaster Management and Emergency Reports: Aim to address issues related to natural or man-made disasters. Typical examples are the utilization of the DTN protocols to ensure effective communication for the prioritization of messages in disaster scenarios [125], the organization of recovery operations in areas with limited network availability, and in proactive disaster management applications to predict patterns of human and vehicle mobility [126,127].…”