Multibuffers Control Considering the Number of Replications in a DTN

Abstract

A delay/disruption-tolerant network (DTN) is a network that can operate in degraded environments, enabling end-to-end communication in discontinuous networks. A DTN uses a store-and-forward method. In this method, stored packets are conveyed by some terminals and forwarded to other ones. If there are packets having different priority, a low-priority packet may be pushed out from a buffer by a high-priority one. A crucial issue is that the arrival rate of low-priority packets is decreased by such pushing out. In this paper, we propose a method considering the number of packet replications. When the buffer is full, the node determines the packet to be discarded based on both the priority of the packet and the number of replications. By computer simulation, we show that the proposed method can increase the arrival rate of both low- and high-priority packets.