A Pub/Sub Message Distribution Architecture for Disruption Tolerant Networks

Abstract

Access to information is taken for granted in urban areas covered by a robust communication infrastructure. Nevertheless most of the areas in the world, are not covered by such infrastructures. We propose a DTN publish and subscribe system called Hikari, which uses nodes' mobility in order to distribute messages without using a robust infrastructure. The area of Disruption/Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN) focuses on providing connectivity to locations separated by networks with disruptions and delays. The Hikari system does not use node identifiers for message forwarding thus eliminating the complexity of routing associated with many forwarding schemes in DTN. Hikari uses nodes paths' information, advertised by special nodes in the system or predicted by the system itself, for optimizing the message dissemination process. We have used the Paris subway system, due to it's complexity, to validate Hikari and to analyze it's performance. We have shown that Hikari achieves a superior deliver rate while keeping redundant messages in the system low, which is ideal when using devices with limited resources for message dissemination.