Towards realistic performance evaluation of delay tolerant network

Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) is a type of wireless ad hoc network in which route is established between a pair of nodes in spite of having long delays and frequent route ruptures. To ensure successful communication in such an environment a robust routing protocol is used the performance of which depends upon various factors such as transmission range, processing capability, transmission delays, bandwidth and the environment. Many researchers have evaluated the performance of routing protocol in an idealistic environment and only few have made an effort to evaluate its performance for realistic environment. This paper is an effort to evaluate the efficacy of DTN in realistic as well as idealistic conditions by designing a simulator in MATLAB-7.0. To make the scenario realistic, obstacles of different shapes, types and numbers were introduced in the simulation region. The results show that the performance of routing protocol vary significantly by changing the environment i.e. the results for idealistic scenario cannot be applied for realistic scenario. © 2013. WSEAS Transactions on Communications.