Patent ID: 8842659

Claim:
A routing method for routing a message transmitted from a source node s to a destination node d in a network comprising n nodes that are intermittently connected to each other and that act as relays for each other, the method comprising the following steps: for each node, measuring average inter-contact times with other nodes and providing the average inter-contact times to other nodes in the network; for each node, receiving and storing average inter-contact time information from other nodes of the network; generating an n×n matrix <λ ij > corresponding to inverses of average inter-contact times between nodes i and j, wherein i is an index value ranging from 1 to n and j is an index value ranging from 1 to n; generating an n×n matrix <t ij > corresponding to an estimation of average inter-contact times between nodes i and j; setting k=1, wherein k indicates a number of relays used in a routing of a message from the source node s to the destination node d, and wherein k max is a maximum number of relays to be considered in the routing; setting an n×n matrix M k equal to <t ij >; computing an opportunistically defined routing method comprising the following steps: for a pair of nodes (i, j) within the network, with 1<=i<=n, 1<=j<=n, i≠j, utilizing <λ ij > and M k to generate estimated inter-contact delays with (k+1) hops and a list of the corresponding relays; storing the estimated inter-contact delays in a matrix M (k+1) and the list of the corresponding relays in a list V i (d) k+1 ; wherein V i (d) k+1 corresponds to a list of the relay nodes in the network considered at the node i when a message is transmitted to the destination node d using k+1 relays; terminating computing of the opportunistically defined routing method if k+1=k max or M k =M (k+1) ; and incrementing k by a predetermined value; and using V i (d) k for routing the messages to said destination node d.